


jam #12: Inevitable Outcome

by PokeNirvash



Series: Kinky Kunoichi [12]
Category: Jam-Orbital, Original Work
Genre: Arrest, Colored Text, Corruption, Cyborgs, Explosive Bullets, Fighting, Gen, Giants, Minor Character Death, Over-the-Nose (OTN) Masks, Police, Precision F Strike, Public Housing, Reason You Suck Speech, Shibuya - Freeform, Tokyo (City), Yakuza, Yoyogi, emotional breakdown, kunoichi - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 09:33:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20190088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PokeNirvash/pseuds/PokeNirvash
Summary: It's all come down to the wire. As Naokuu continues to wage battle against the Shimizu clan's secret weapon, Shin confronts the Kunoichi in their abandoned apartment hideout, demanding Muchise's release. Achievement of their goals is so close for the duo, yet considering the opposing trio's actions and the outside forces closing in on Yoyogi, the question of the hour is: just how far away is that achievement, in truth?





	1. Prologue

The tapping of sneaker bottoms against vinyl stair treads echoed throughout the eleven-story well, completely barren of all other manner of life the building that housed it was designed for. The sole individual there, the source of the taps, continued running up, flight after flight, inhaling and exhaling for breath with each individual riser they cleared. Eventually, the taps slowed, growing quiet for a moment before seeing themselves replaced with a halting skid across a larger stretch of floor than a single tread.

As he came to a stop, Shin’s breathing became more pronounced, the exhaustion of having to run so far while trying to beat a clock with an indeterminate deadline having finally caught up to him. He crouched over, his hands on his knees and his head facing the floor as he gasped for air, his chest puffing up with each inhale. He stood in place on the landing between the ninth and tenth floors of the Rabaraki Complex, in front of the sole window on the miniscule mezzanine, as far as the north stairwell was concerned. After hunkering over in place and recollecting what he could stand, he turned his head and looked out the window, giving a glimpse to the northern buffer around the Complex and the buildings of Yoyogi bordering the property. As he did, a loud metallic thud could be heard through the surprisingly intact pane.

Another one of Tomauchi’s impact rounds, a giant puck whose circumference was equivalent to the base perimeter of a high-end refrigerator with a gently sloped yet prominently pointed tip at the end, pierced the exposed earthen surface of the buffer, already scattered with soily debris from previous impacts. As the round dug into the ground at its release speed, the earth around the point of impact cracked and rose up, to either float around the projectile or drift back in reaction to the loud crash it made. Between the crumbling and compacted earth, a dust cloud of particulate matter detached from the chunks of once-solid ground rose up, once more obscuring the area of impact, leaving what happened in the first few seconds afterwards unknown.

It happened in front of the north stairwell, and just as he was as an inhabitant of the square corridor of flights, Shin was the only one to witness the blast from that specific vantage point.

He looked out at the obfuscating cloud for a few seconds more, his breaths quieting but persistent, and then turned back. He lifted his hands off of his knees and straightened his posture, though avoided adjusting himself completely upright. His right hand drifted over to his right thigh, reaching for something and pulling that something out, and then holding it before him with both hands.

A Sig Sauer P220 semi-automatic pistol, colored black and loaded with a single 7-round flush-to-grip magazine. The same pistol that Naokuu entrusted to him the evening before. He had little opportunity to use it throughout the entirety of their time in Yoyogi, and what opportunities there were, he neglected to take. But now, he knew he had to use it. Now, he was facing a larger roadblock to his end goal than the ultimate nuisances the yakuza making up the Shimizu clan’s ranks turned out to be. He pointed his gun in the air, his left hand gripping the handle with index finger resting against the trigger, and brought his right up to the pistol slide. He gripped the top of the slide and then pushed it down, exposing the barrels of the gun. Once the slide was brought back completely, he let out his last exhale of recollected breath, the air coming out through an O-shaped opening.

“Right,” he assured himself. “Let’s do this.”

With everything he needed said out of his system, he released the slide, sending it back to its initial position with a harsh, decisive click.

********

South of Yoyogi, within the lower levels of the Shibuya Police Building in the ward’s downtown sector, preparations of another breed took place. In the dimly lit halls, groups of officers came down from above ground while others emerged from the doors on either side, advancing elsewhere. Beyond both doors were locker rooms. Rooms housing not evidence or case records, but uniforms and equipment for even the most dangerous of situations.

In spite of bright fluorescent lighting through rectangular panels fitted into the ceiling above their heads, the black lockers lining the narrow aisles of the room and the dark grey floor made it seem just as dim as the halls to the officers making use of them. Many were already in uniform, while others were switching out of their business suits and into garb befitting of their status. Blue police uniforms for some, riot gear for others. One pulled a New Nambu M60 revolver from their locker and slid it inside their hip-mounted holster, a leather sling attached to the bottom of the handle. Another pulled a helmet from the upper portion of their locker, fitting it on their cranium as they stared through the transparent protective visor over their face. A third procured a pump-action shotgun painted black, cocking the underside as they held it before their chest.

But no matter the tasks they had, or the roles they were given, they all bore audial witness to the same set of words. Words belonging to a speech given by their Investigative Division commander moments later, concerning the mission they simultaneously readied themselves for.

“I understand you’re aware of the simplicity of this mission. We enter Yoyogi, and leave Yoyogi. Any yakuza encountered are not to be engaged. And we do not return until we arrest _this_ man!”

In further emphasis, Gojiki held up a picture before the men he called out to the central garage. He stood on a platform flanked by his black-suited lackeys, and the grouping of officers went a fair distance back, so less than all of them could see the image. But Gojiki didn’t even need to look at it to understand its clarity. The laminated photo of Naokuu from his ID pouch, stained with ash residue from his cigars and bearing circular burn marks all over, was etched into his memory. And though he showed it all of once to his subordinates, he internally hoped they remembered it with such clarity.

“Is that clear?”

In unison, the collection of officers raised their right hands and held them to their heads, saluting their commander, and then shouted a unanimous reply in turn.

“Sir!”

Their affirmation was all that was necessary to move onto the next and final step of their preparation. Boarding the vehicles they were to take to their destination. Those in the standard uniform boarded multiple squad cars lined up in the middle portion of the garage, with two officers to one vehicle, both in front. Those in riot gear, meanwhile, loaded themselves into two blue police buses with two white stripes running under the side windows. They were parked to the right of the squad cars, stopped in front just as the foremost vehicles were.

Gojiki stood by the back door of the rightmost squad car in the front row, watching as the last of the riot geared officers loaded the front bus. Dressed in a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow and black dress pants with suspenders, as he normally did, his appearance was starkly different from those under his command. But it wasn’t like it needed to be the same. He was in command of these men, after all. Seeing the preparations for his mission finish up, he couldn’t help but grin with his tobacco-stained whites on full display, grunting in selfish satisfaction. As he did, his right arm moved down, his elbow leaving the top edge of the squad car, and pulled the door open, no glance necessary.

“We leave in thirty seconds,” he told the driver of the car he climbed into. “Go as soon as the doors are open.”

“You got it, Chief,” Azaguro replied with a nod, gripping the steering wheel with his gloved hands.

Shortly after Gojiki’s call, the rolling sheet doors at the end of the garage began to open, allowing the white light of the world outside to shine in from the bottom. It was bright to the point of being near-blinding, and yet Gojiki, who lacked either sunglasses or a cap with visor, didn’t react to the sudden brightness. He just sat in the middle of the squad car’s backseat, seatbelt off and arms crossed, sneering wide with anticipation as the shadow over him started to fade from the bottom up.

“Chief Gojiki,” Natsutaka called from the passenger’s side seat of the car at a reasonable volume. “Is all of this really necessary just to apprehend Tanoshiba?”

“Yeah,” Azaguro agreed. “Seems kinda excessive, don’t ya think?”

“Maybe,” Gojiki replied, lifting his upper lip to expose his teeth. “But with the situation _he’s_ in…”

The shadow over his squad car transport receded further, the doors responsible reaching their limit of recession as the frames became completely filled with the morning light.

“…we can’t be too careful.”

With the visual signal on full display, it was finally time.

Delay was nonexistent. Within seconds, the asphalt roads of Meiji Avenue were loud with the revving of multiple engines at once, the noise they produced exacerbated by the continuous wailing of sirens, flashing red atop each vehicle’s roof.

Pedestrian traffic on the scramble due east of the famous Shibuya Crossing across the elevated rail line came to a complete stop, save for those on the fringes of either crosswalk cutting through Meiji Avenue, who retreated to the sidewalks proper in reaction. They, those on the other crosswalks, and those standing on either sidewalk corner characterizing the intersection – man and woman, worker and tourist alike – looked in the same direction, to the south where the noise on the Avenue was coming from. It got closer the further it got, soon reaching their ears as the last of the retreaters from two of the four crosswalks got back on the sidewalks, turning around to look as well.

Passing the first empty crosswalk in front, without even bothering to stop, was a police squad car. A Mazda 2 sedan, silver on top and black on the bottom, engine roaring and siren blaring. Behind it were multiple squad cars just like it, taking up the entire left lane in rows of two cars each. How far back they went in total was indeterminate, for those witnessing the line from the very front. The line of squad cars behind the leader was not continuous, however. Six rows back, the sedans were replaced with large blue police buses, lacking sirens to blare but possessing enough engine power to make up for the lack in volume. Their association with the squad cars at either end of it was clear, thus there was no text emphasizing their affiliation on either side of either bus.

The squad cars were a different matter. Despite their comparatively obvious affiliation, labels on the sides of each body was as customary as it was mandatory. Located within the silver strip between the bottom edges of the side windows and where the black half began were five kanji that said all that was necessary concerning each car’s specific jurisdiction.

渋谷区警察

Shibuya Ward Police

Each one of the squad cars, as well as both buses among their ranks, followed the lead vehicle, blazing down Meiji Avenue with no intention of stopping for any distraction coming its way. Two red circular lights flashing like the siren up top were situated on either side of the National Police Agency crest which replaced the standard car emblem, and all three stood installed above the license plate over the grill, white with green text. The upper text said “渋谷800” or “Shibuya 800”, while the lower text simply stated “し52-89”.

Gojiki sat in the backseat of the speeding squad car, legs partially spread and arms crossed. He stared out the front windshield, past Azaguro and Natsutaka as they drove and simply sat by respectively, a look of determination and anticipation, both of which were anything but sincere, on both his glare and his grin.

Seconds passed, and then, his expression made some minor changes. His eyebrows raised themselves by a centimeter, and his grin opened up to show his teeth. Those tweaks, insubstantial at first glance, were all that Gojiki needed to show how truly excited he was within the restraints he put on his outward emotions.

He chuckled deviously. “Just you wait, Tanoshiba. When I’m through with you, you’ll wish you hadn’t given me the slip.”

His utterance was audible only to himself and the two others in the squad car, though with the roaring engine and the blaring siren drowning out most audible noise even inside the vehicle, it might as well have fallen on deaf ears. But Gojiki didn’t mind, let alone care. He said it, and that was all that mattered. Now all that was left was for his squad to continue their drive down Meiji Avenue towards Yoyogi, under the bright blue sky and the stray beginnings of a few clouds, where he would see if his vocal demonstration of excitement would prove correct.

********

Back in Yoyogi, on the battlefield he and his opponent made for themselves, Naokuu stood and caught his own breath. He gripped his once-again empty P250 in his right hand, the barrel pointing down at the ground upon which he let his discarded magazine drop. He hunched over slightly, the duffel bag he kept on him throughout the fight to this point, starting to slide off, passing his elbow and moving down his forearm. He inhaled and exhaled, the breaths smooth but intense, his red orbs fixed into a glare at the behemoth standing across from him on the buffer north of the Rabaraki Complex.

The once-level landscape of undeveloped dirt had changed form dramatically. Discarded impact rounds fired moments earlier littered the area, either embedded in the earth, or having torn up certain portions before winding up elsewhere. Though some parts remained flat enough to move around on without thought, the end effects proved uneven enough that caution still had to be taken. And standing on the other side of that caution-inducing maze of undamaged ground was Tomauchi, standing tall as before, staring Naokuu down with his glowing right eye, hidden behind the visor embedded into his cybernetically enhanced head.

Likewise, from their eleventh-story corner apartment hideout within the abandoned Complex structure, the Kunoichi watched the stare-down. Tazuna stood at the right edge of the paneless window, her arms crossed as she observed with an aloof yet interested gaze, while Fuji stood to her left, gripping the bottom of the window in excitement as she looked out with wider vision. Nawa kept to the back, silently watching with a more lady-like crossing of the arms.

“They’re finally standing off again,” Tazuna remarked.

“This is it, Tazuna!” Fuji exclaimed with an enthusiastic nod, leaning forward some. “Their final exchange of blows!”

Indeed it was. The clear cylinders sticking out of Tomauchi’s right arm housing the impact rounds he used in the battle have been exhausted to their near-absolute limits, only one round remaining within the refrigerator-sized shell on his shoulder. As far as their ammo was concerned, he had one shot left. But that didn’t shake his confidence in the slightest.

“IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE? YOUR EFFORTS ARE USELESS. GIVE UP WHILE YOU STILL CAN.”

“And resign myself to an easy death?” Naokuu retorted, raising his head and cocking it slightly at Tomauchi. “No thanks.”

“EVERYTHING YOU HAVE DONE SO FAR HAS BEEN WEAK.” He curled his lips as much as he could, glaring down at Naokuu with what seemed to be pity. “FACE IT. YOU HAVE NOTHING.”

“Oh, is _that_ what you think?” Naokuu pulled back the zipper on the duffel bag, hanging from his wrist by its straps, and reached in, glaring at Tomauchi with a small yet cocky grin. “Then let’s _change_ that, shall we?”

After finding what he needed, Naokuu let the straps slide off his wrist and around his gun, the bag dropping to the ground by his feet. In his left hand was what he procured from the inner contents: another ten-round magazine. Only unlike the others, this one had text stamped on it. Three kanji characters, printed vertically in white. 試験的. Experimental.

With a solid push against the bottom with his palm, the magazine went into the P250 with a click. He pointed it back down at the ground and pulled the slide back firmly, letting go as it snapped back into place. Then, he raised the gun and pointed it directly to his right, turning his head to look in that same direction. All while directing his voice towards Tomauchi.

“Now, watch and observe.”

Up in the apartment, Fuji leaned forward a little more in confused curiosity. “Wait, what’s he doing _now_?”

“Just shut up and find out,” Tazuna said as she raised her right hand and tapped Fuji on the head, making her grunt in reaction to the barely painful chop.

Tomauchi stared down at Naokuu for a brief moment more, and then, after the brief lull following the smaller man’s redirection of his line of fire, he slowly turned his head in the direction he now faced, both with his eyes and his gun.

Naokuu remained still for another few moments, grinning as he kept his firearm trained on his target, whatever it was both he and Tomauchi had their eyes on. Soon enough, that moment was up, and his grin widened, showing his teeth.

“Heh.”

He pulled the P250’s trigger, the first bullet of ten in the new cartridge exploding from the barrel with a bang. Naokuu couldn’t help but raise his arm up from the recoil, but that simple movement aside, he kept his calm as he stared at his target: one of the several buildings on the other side of the asphalt perimeter marking the Rabaraki Complex’s property lines. A five-story building like most of the rest, with a façade spanning about ten meters in width with three front-facing windows per story, a door in place of the middle on the ground floor. Naokuu stared at the tan building for a few seconds as the projectile traveled its way to it. The impact was near-invisible, the sound just as faint from a normal person’s perspective.

And then came the explosion. The walls, windows, and door located on the first two stories, the bottom portion of the third included with it, suddenly burst apart in a loud crash, debris flying forward onto the asphalt and the edge of the buffer with a gray dust cloud following behind it. What’s more, the upper portions of the building started to collapse downward, as if the supports behind the façade burst apart from behind the smokescreen. All from a single bullet.

Tomauchi gasped, his upper lip raising in astonishment as he kept his eye on the effects.

Compared to the behemoth’s subtlety, Fuji’s response to the single-shot destruction was anything but. She gripped the nonexistent windowsill with her gloved hands as tightly as she could, her eyes wide as she leaned out further, too astounded to hold herself back. Her surprise even reached such levels that her verbal response couldn’t come out as smoothly as she wanted at the very start.

“D-Did you just see that!? He destroyed that building in one shot!”

“Yeah, that’s pretty amazing…” Though not as psyched as Fuji, Tazuna was astounded all the same, her eyes wide and her voice appearing somewhat defeated. She even uncrossed her arms, the sight was too much for her to behold with her ego as it was.

And as always, in contrast, Nawa didn’t react in the slightest bit, simply observing with the slightest amusement in her eyes.

“You see that?” Naokuu called out to Tomauchi, the giant’s stunned response still lingering. “That’s what’s gonna happen to _you_ in the next minute.” He turned his head and arm back, pointing his gun up at Tomauchi one-handed as his grin widened.

“IT WILL NOT,” Tomauchi replied. “YOU WILL BE DEAD BEFORE THAT HAPPENS.”

He turned back with a scowl and raised his right arm, the final impact round disappearing from its transparent cylinder and the barrel in his index and middle fingers where the last nineteen ejected charging up, multiple blue streams of electricity dancing around the locked fist.

Naokuu just grunted through his smirk at Tomauchi’s preparation to attack, lowering his gun. “That’s just what I’ve been waiting to _hear_!”

As soon as he finished, Naokuu rushed forward in a sprinting motion, continuing to grip his handgun as he strode towards Tomauchi. After a few seconds, he came upon a previously used impact round sticking out of the ground, tilted in a way that the closer edge was closer to the surface than the opposite one. Naokuu took advantage of it, veering to the left some and leaping forward. His black sneaker came down on the shining surface of the discarded slug and jumped even higher.

Tomauchi’s preparation completed in that instant, and without haste, the metallic thud from within his right arm sounded one final time, the impact round shooting past the barrier of jolts with ease.

Then, time slowed down for both men. The urgency of the situation, as one-sided as it was, was just that overwhelming. Tomauchi glared at Naokuu, his frown shrinking but curving upwards slightly in caution. His lack of hesitation in firing meant he was sure the impact round would blow Naokuu back, most likely fatally, but the more his mouth took the basic skeleton of a U-shape, the more he feared it would miss at any degree. By contrast, Naokuu glared at Tomauchi, his arms spread to either side with fists fully clenched, his right leg raised and his left hanging straight, and a wide grin plastered across his face. He was unafraid of what would happen, whether survival or death awaited. But the thrill of the situation excited him. He couldn’t help but snicker a single syllable under his breath, widening his grin with a simple show of the teeth.

The kunoichi felt the urgency, too. Especially those at the windowsill, watching it in as close a proximity as they could while staying out of Tomauchi’s attention.

“Here it comes…” Tazuna muttered, gripping her right arm in anticipation.

Fuji gulped underneath her mask, too tensed up for even the tiniest of words.

Eventually, the front portion of the impact round finally reached Naokuu, just as his straight leg was about to clear the topmost portion of its 3D trajectory. With how close the top of the round was to the bottom of the detective’s sneaker sole, it was anyone’s guess what would happen. Would he clear it in time, or would he make contact and risk his brazen effort being all for naught?

In a way, both came true. He avoided getting struck by the round, but his foot touched it regardless. He pushed down against the iron top in the instant of contact, the left limb bending at the knee in further preparation. And then, he took off.

And with that, time resumed at its normal speed for both the attacker and his would-be victim. The round sped behind Naokuu, who leaped off the slug and rotated around to see its trajectory to the end, both legs raised up and bent. He saw it hit the ground, bringing up another explosion of naught but dirt and dust.

“No _way_…!” Tazuna’s mouth hung wide beneath her mask in disbelief, her gripping arm hanging just as limp as the one that was being gripped.

“He did it!” Fuji, on the other hand, cheered in excitement, bringing her hands up to her chest as she did a jump of joy.

Nawa joined them in response, but settled for simply closing her eyes. The emotion accompanying that action was just as unclear as the reason she kept watching, despite knowing the purpose the battle out their window truly served.

Tomauchi grunted in response to Naokuu’s expert aversion of his final shot, honestly shocked at the effortlessness he put into those two real-time seconds of action.

But that was only the beginning. Naokuu let a grin slip and, taking advantage of the giant’s situation through use of his own, he completed his midair turn and pointed his gun at Tomauchi’s still-locked fist. With the same lacking hesitation Tomauchi showed with him, he pulled the trigger, his arms raising from the recoil and the bullet speeding right for his hand.

Tomauchi quickly closed up the barrel in his index and middle digits, but had no time to pull his arm back. The bullet struck his middle finger head-on, crumpling against the metal exterior as opposed to deflecting. That wasn’t enough for him to feel.

The sudden jolt that followed, shooting straight through his arm from finger to shoulder like a bolt of weaponized lightning, was much different. Tomauchi hesitated pulling back following the sharp sensation, his arm seeming like it was locked in place. It went limp for a brief moment, and then came the burst.

Without so much as a flash to signal its start, Tomauchi’s arm exploded, everything from where it connected to his torso onward shattering into pieces. The tanned exterior plating that mimicked human skin and the machinery inside became nothing but debris, exploding outward in pieces that could fit in the palm of one’s hand, if held one at a time. And though they failed to shatter to the same degree, the clear cylinders emptied of all their impact rounds cracked as they flew off as well, pieces breaking off near the base as if only they were following the lead of the main arm. Those cylinders, plus a decent portion of larger debris, flew in the direction of the Rabaraki Complex, crashing into the exterior and through the windows on the third, fourth, and fifth floors, all between the center and the western end. It wasn’t enough to tear the structure asunder, but it was enough to make it shake on its foundation.

The kunoichi felt the vibrations from their hideout. Nawa, as she was wont to do, remained unmoving as the building shook, but Tazuna steadied herself, arms spread out and eyes wide as she looked out the window at the destructive effects of Naokuu’s counterattack. Fuji, meanwhile, was still cheering on Naokuu’s maneuver past the impact round, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she thrust her arms into the air in excitement.

“Yeah! Uhh-wahh!”

Mid-cheer, though, the shaking disrupted her footing, and she had no time to re-steady herself. She fell to the right, turning to face Tazuna. The ponytailed ninja let out a yelp of her own as her twintailed teammate fell atop her, the both of them crashing to the tatami floor.

The vibrations even reached the central hallways of the Complex, from the first to the eleventh floors. Shin ran through the dark straightaway, lit only by the stairwell door he left open behind him, his gun in both hands. The shaking structure disrupted his pace, forcing him to veer off to the left and backwards. That failed to deter him completely, as he went back to running, as if the impact he was ignorant to never even occurred.

Though free from the effects of the shattering arm inside the project, Naokuu still took precautions against the debris that was once Tomauchi’s right arm, holding up both forearms, right in front of left, before his head to block what he could. As if through luck, nothing caused major damage to his person. Between that and his legs moving from their bent-up position and spreading out for landing, it appeared he was going to hit ground uninjured. Even so, he lowered his arms by a few inches after the blowback of shattered metal completed, looking through the resulting haze at Tomauchi, to see if he’d make any further moves.

He did. Tomauchi’s red right eye glowed behind his visor even brighter than before, the whirring noise returning in full force, and his left arm reached out for Naokuu, slicing through the haze and preparing to grab him. Naokuu took quick notice and, with nothing more than a resumed glare and a brief scowl, pointed his gun and fired again. Unlike the previous bullet, the current shot missed the hand. But that wasn’t Naokuu’s target. Tomauchi’s shoulder was.

Immediately after impact, the shoulder burst apart, everything from his neck to half-way down his upper arm turning into the same clutter of palm-sized debris as his missing limb. He was pushed back by the effect some too, but not enough to lose balance.

As he saw Tomauchi lose his other arm, Naokuu made landing on the ground, skidding back a few feet. He braked himself after contact, but didn’t stop. Instead, he rushed forward, heading back for Tomauchi. At first, he dashed across what level ground around the behemoth remained. Not two seconds later, the remains of Tomauchi’s arm fell to the ground, the palm making impact first. Within several feet of the man. He took that opportunity and leaped onto the discarded arm, rushing up the middle digit to the hand proper, and up the arm that slowly started to descend. Also descending was Tomauchi’s left foot, inching closer to Naokuu with the intent of crushing him like a bug. In another act of speedy thinking, Naokuu leaped off the arm upon reaching the elbow and landed on the boot-mimicking limb-end. In the middle of his jump, his right arm crossed over his chest, the gun in his hand pointed at Tomauchi’s upper right thigh. He pulled the trigger, the bullet hit, and as with the first two limbs, the leg joint burst apart. With the only limb he had to support himself in that instant separated, Tomauchi started to tilt backwards towards the ground. And Naokuu kept running, dashing up his shin to the bent knee and leaping off once again. While above Tomauchi’s slowly descending body, he fired another shot into his other upper thigh, blasting it into a shower of debris as well.

He was high above Tomauchi, but knew his presence there wouldn’t last long. Not when, as far as he knew, he still had the tenacity to attack, even without limbs. So at his peak, Naokuu halted his ascent with a mid-air somersault, and then forced himself into descent with outstretched legs. He made landing on Tomauchi, his teeth gritted tight as his arms stood raised above his head. Immediately, he brought them down, revealing two things. The angry glare to accompany his clenched whites, and the P250 he now brandished with both hands. He didn’t even hesitate to fire the opening round for the latter half of his special ammo.

That sixth bullet hit Tomauchi square in the middle of his visor; the first round to cause real damage a millisecond after impact. The visor cracked, the glass fissures spreading to what accounted for his eyes underneath. What hair-thin ends reached the glowing mechanical orb were tinted brighter than the orb itself through the glass. But it could only mesmerize for a second. After impact, the upper half of Tomauchi’s head burst apart as his limbs did. The visor shattered, the metal skin beyond shattered, everything from above his mouth to the top of his head broke apart, The only items within that didn’t were his oversized cybernetic eyes; one still glowing, one not.

Naokuu grunted as he pulled his arms back, pointing his gun upwards as he leaped back from the top of Tomauchi’s nose, his landing point seconds ago. With that area and beyond crumbled apart and Tomauchi reaching the nadir of his descent, he had to ready himself for the landing.

With a thud against the ground, what was left of Tomauchi made impact with the buffer surrounding the Rabaraki Complex, sending up a large cloud of dust from the surface. It barely reached half the height of the structure he laid beside, but it was enough to obscure sight.

It was only after the noise beyond the window stopped coming that the two kunoichi that experienced a descent of their own started to move again, now free of concern about their building being hit with further vibrations. Tazuna grunted as she laid back on the floor, slowly opening her eyes and looking down at Fuji, who fell face-first into her leotard-clad breasts. In contrast to her teammate’s careful recovery, Fuji pushed herself off the ground, both hands on the tatami, and turned around, speeding back to the window.

“What happened?” she asked nobody in particular as she gripped the windowsill and looked out. “Who won? I gotta know!”

Tazuna groaned as she sat up, turning away from the window as she rubbed the back of her head, paying no concern to the outcome Fuji was invested in.

All she could see in those first few moments was the lingering dust cloud from Tomauchi’s fall. The top portions started to fade, but for a time, the area surrounding his upper body was still rather dense. Either man’s fate, from where she stood, was indeterminate.

Until the victor’s right arm moved, angled downward and brandishing his P250, finger off the trigger.

The dust cloud faded around the upper portion of Tomauchi’s cybernetic remains, and standing on his neck, in his subtle victory pose, was Naokuu. He stared forward, smirking in satisfaction at the wrath he wrought to secure this victory, his red irises pulsating from the equally lingering thrill.

“He _won_! Mister Policeman won the fight!” She stepped back, eyes closed in excitement, as she balled her hands into fists, putting her left to her chest while pumping her right into the air. “Yeah, I _knew_ he could do it!”

Nawa turned away from the window but looked out silently, acknowledging his victory alongside her subordinate. Tazuna, who stepped further away from the window with one hand on her hip, stopped and turned back, not so much in acknowledgement but in response to Fuji.

“I wouldn’t celebrate. His victory means we have to fight him _next_, remember?”

“Y-Yeah, of course. Sorry, Tazuna…” Fuji nervously laughed.

As the two conversed, Nawa’s attention moved away from the window to the doorway into the main apartment with a blink. The catalyst of that attention shift was a faint yet nevertheless audible kick against a wooden surface.

The door into the kunoichi’s apartment was kicked open by a figure blended in with the shadows, the final obstacle in his path blowing back and hitting the opposite wall. He rushed into the genkan, not even bothering to remove his shoes, and dashed into the hallway, past the bathroom, the kitchen area, and what closets were to his sides. His sole sight was the open entryway on the left side, the only source of light into the dark passage separating him from his targets.

With each stride forward, he kept gasping for breath, the inhalations and exhalations much more intense than before. In time, he reached the dead end, and with that his path towards confrontation. With a quick left turn, he dashed past the frame and into the tatami-clad apartment space, speeding to a stop as he saw the trio he had waited to see for what felt like the longest time. The unmistakably recognizable, scantily-clad and OTN-masked women responsible for his suffering over the past month. The ponytailed member on the left, the twintailed on the right, and the long-haired leader in the middle.

The Kinky Kunoichi.

Tazuna turned around to face him in surprise. “It’s _him_!”

Fuji did the same. “When did _he_ get here!?”

Nawa simply chuckled as she faced the boy, avoiding any changes to her pose. “Well now. Look who came to join us.”

Shin stood and faced the trio, continually catching his breath as he glared at them with the utmost intensity. Once Nawa finished her greeting, he growled out his own.

“_You_… Give her _back_.”

The kunoichi were unresponsive to Shin’s solitary demand, staring at him for the seconds in which he replied, and the seconds after. Tazuna and Fuji recovered from the shock of seeing him in that time, their eyeshadow-exposing gazes returning to match Nawa’s. Once they processed his words, plus a moment of extra tension, they responded.

Nawa did so with a soft laugh, while Tazuna and Fuji went for a more vocal approach.

“What ever could you be talking about?”

“You’ll have to be more specific than _that_, boy~.”

Shin was not pleased. He growled through his teeth and his brow furrowed further.

“You know damn _well_ what I’m talking about!!”

He raised his arms and pointed his gun at the three women. Tazuna blinked as she looked in honest surprise at his gall, Fuji’s eyes widened in more obvious shock, while Nawa kept herself collected, merely staring him down as she had when he arrived.

“Now, you’re gonna go in that room, you’re gonna bring her out, and you’re gonna hand her over, no tricks or anything! Do you understand!?” he screamed, on the verge of angry tears. “Give her back right now! GIVE BACK MUCHISE!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The New Nambu M60 Revolver is the standard firearm for law enforcement officials in Japan. Apparently in 2084, nearly a century after the model stopped production, they’re still using such archaic weaponry…  
2\. The 800 on the Gojiki’s squad car’s license plate means the vehicle it belongs to is a special vehicle requiring yearly inspection with displacement greater than 660cc. Police vehicles fall within this category.


	2. Act 1

All was quiet on the northern buffer between the Rabaraki Complex and the buildings in Yoyogi proper boxing the property in. Apart from the faint breaths of wind, aiding in the dispersion of the lingering dirt clouds, the area where the battle between Naokuu and Tomauchi finished was soundless. Tomauchi laid back against the ground, reduced to a giant cybernetic torso with a head bearing nothing above the midpoint of his philtrum. His three limbs that were shot off laid on the ground also. His right leg fell forward with the mechanical stump facing away from him, while his left leg had the stump facing towards him, while also laying atop the left arm. The debris from where those limbs were detached, as well as the completely destroyed right arm, were scattered around all the pieces. About six of the clear cylinders attached to the arm were on the ground; the rest were stuck in the Complex structure. The debris from his upper head laid above the breakpoint, the two red eyes behind the visor prominent among the wreckage but ultimately lacking in the luminosity they once possessed. Lying there, unresponsive in the moments after the battle was called, he did nothing.

Naokuu, meanwhile, had slowly backed up, moving off of his neck and onto his upper chest. His victorious smirk had faded, and his firing arm had lowered. He simply looked at the results of his fight in what appeared to be quiet introspection. At least, until he opened his mouth.

“Welp, that takes care of _that_.” He reached across and stored his gun away in its holster, turning around and walking across the rest of Tomauchi’s torso to where it ended. “Guess I’d better start catching up.”

It didn’t take long for him to walk from the one end of Tomauchi to the other. Once at the edge, he hopped off, returning to the surface below on both feet. The behemoth he brought down appeared immobile enough, so there was no harm in leaving him behind as he strolled away with his hands in his pockets. He moved between the strewn limbs, reaching both their end and the point where he had to turn in order to reach his next destination.

“YOU THERE…”

But before he could, the weak mechanically enhanced voice cut through the eerie yet idyllic silence. Naokuu heard it without question, but made no overreaction. He simply stopped in place, waited a second, and then turned to the right, glancing over at Tomauchi’s damaged but still-alive body.

“THE ACTIONS YOU TOOK TODAY… WERE NOTHING SHORT OF INSANITY. EVEN SO, TO PUSH ME TO THIS POINT… I MUST ADMIT… I UNDERESTIMATED YOU.”

Naokuu closed his eyes and smirked again. “Hn. Don’t mention it.” He opened his eyes and resumed walking. “I underestimated myself too…”

Clouds slowly started to come in, enough to put an end to the uninterrupted blue but not so much as to blot it out completely. Though damaged from the effects of the second surface-shattering bullet, the Complex structure remained standing, resilient in the face of the battle it witnessed. Two halves of the setting, perfectly complementing the detached conversation between the two adversaries. Though the one’s long-resumed walk to the Complex’s front doors – the left entrance in particular – continued in earnest, that did not stop Tomauchi from continuing himself.

“BUT… DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR VICTORY MEANS?”

“I think it’s obvious.”

“IT MEANS… I NO LONGER HAVE TO HOLD BACK.”

Naokuu froze again, this time urgently. His hand stopped before it could grab the door handle, and he looked down in fright with an ajar mouth and a couple beads of sweat.

“What was that?” he whispered.

“DISENGAGING EXOSKELETON.”

Not a second after Tomauchi’s self-order, his torso erupted. It didn’t, however, explode or shatter. In favor of something so reckless, to the level of or one greater than how Naokuu rendered him to his current state, steam shot from his chest to his stomach as if a hidden opening running along that line had just revealed itself. It billowed out, moving faster and faster until it encompassed the top surface of the mechanical remains, obscuring it from Naokuu’s vision. The mechanical bang that accompanied its arrival only served to make its sudden conjuration all the more harsh.

Naokuu lowered his hand and turned to look at Tomauchi’s torso and the steam escaping, the fright from his expression of realization faded. He scowled again, scoffing through his gritted teeth as he glared at the event before him. Partly out of frustration at having to deal with yet another obstacle, but also anticipation of what Tomauchi’s plan in accomplishing this task was.

At the top of his torso, the steam started to thin out. Seconds later, a human-sized figure rose from behind the veil and stood, staring down with fists clenched and stature firm. And then, the steamscreen finally cleared.

Standing atop Tomauchi was Tomauchi himself. However, this version of Tomauchi was smaller than the counterpart he emerged from, more the size of a standard human than the average building in Yoyogi. His appearance beyond dimensions also appeared recognizably human, the tanktop and pants associated with his larger images being actual clothes instead of literally painted-on allegories. The visor conforming to his face was also a real visor, with enough room between the single frameless lens and his skin to be recognizably removable. But for all of these human details, there remained a sense of artificiality to him. His right arm had the structure and color of his tanned skin, but with all the exposed joints and framework of a high-grade prosthetic missing the synthetic skin meant to disguise its mechanics. What’s more, a red glow was, as before, visible under the right half of his shades, contrasting with the very much human-looking left orb. There was also his firm posture, almost unnatural in how he refused to budge, but that was neither here nor there. Regardless of whether he was mostly man or mostly machine, one thing was certain. He stood in place, glaring down at Naokuu with a displeasured scowl.

Naokuu glared and scowled right back, a frustrated growl rumbling through his teeth. “For the love of…!” He reached across himself and unsheathed his gun from its holster, and without getting in a single more word in edgewise, he fired at Tomauchi. With four quick pulls of the trigger, all the remaining shots from his special magazine were gone.

Without even moving from his spot, Tomauchi raised his right arm and moved it around, zig-zagging the limb across the air in front of him. Four swipes, and then he stopped, holding his hand up with the back facing out. Between his fingers were the bullets, all four of them. One pinched between his thumb and index, two between his index and middle, and one between his middle and ring. One with the back facing out, three with the tips in its place, each tip colored with a bright blue dot. He squeezed all of the tiny projectiles by their sides, holding them firm between his digits.

Then, he raised his arm up and brought it down, at the same time leaping upwards into the air. Four tiny clinks sounded against the armless, legless, mostly headless exoskeleton from which he emerged, after which it faced the same fate as the rest of its missing parts. The torso burst apart, disintegrating into tiny pieces or smaller, floating amongst a cloud consisting of a mix of the same steam accompanying the disengagement, and dust from the ground upon which the torso that was once there laid.

Seconds later, Tomauchi came back down, landing on the ground before his body with a crouch, both arms outstretched. His expression was just as void of any meaningful emotion as it was at the onset. Shortly after his landing, he stood back up, lowering his arms to his sides, as he turned to the right to face Naokuu.

“NOW THEN, SHALL WE RESUME?”

Naokuu turned to face Tomauchi after he landed, standing there for a moment in slight awe. The frustration he felt when the behemoth turned normal-sized cyborg proved himself undefeated had faded, as did any fear he might have experienced when his last chance at easily disposing of him was easily vanquished. He no longer minded that Tomauchi was still in action and more mobile than before. That mindset was solidified the moment he blinked, his awed ajar mouth morphing into a smirk, and his eyebrows angling down in further show of that change in emotion.

“Well then. Guess there’s no backing outta this one.”

Within seconds, he stashed his gun away in its holster, he dropped the duffel bag over his shoulder to the ground, and he took off his jacket, throwing it behind him towards the door he planned on advancing past. Now with his white 十億 shirt in the forefront, he stood in a pose for Tomauchi, right arm outstretched with fingers outstretched and palm facing behind him, and a determined glare accentuating his cocky grin.

“You’re on, tough guy.”

********

注意

代々木に入る

CAUTION

Now Entering Yoyogi

The white metal sign and its black text was bolted to the warning overhang bolted to the Yamanote Line overpass, blocking out a single portion of the alternating pattern of slanted yellow and black stripes. The sign above it, “大型最徐行” or “Large-Size Vehicles Slow Down”, was unobstructed, but the height limit was fully hidden behind the sign alerting motorists and pedestrians to the underpass’s status as Yoyogi’s southeastern entrance.

It was around that same time that the cavalcade of squad cars and the two accompanying buses that left the Shibuya Police Building that morning arrived at that entrance, the car in front slowing to a stop. Its siren went silent, but the flashing lights kept going. Shortly before it came to a full halt, a man in a black jacket and matching pants, waiting with his back against the brick abutment for the past several minutes, approached the street, the only thing standing between him and the vehicle being a streetside railing. In kind, the squad car’s back left window rolled down three-quarters of the way.

“Greetings, sir,” the undercover officer greeted to Gojiki, sitting in the back seat with a scowl of impatience.

“Cut to the chase. Where is he?” he asked without so much as turning his head.

“At the Rabaraki Complex, sir.” The officer leaned forward, resting his arms on top of the railing as he resumed speaking. “Last I checked, the secret weapon’s still active, so you’ll want to take caution.”

Gojiki smirked. “Hn. Don’t patronize me. We’ll handle him, just you watch.” The window started to roll back up as he finished, and when he was done, the car took off again.

Despite his commander’s own patronizing attitude and his driver’s near-immediate departure, the officer straightened himself up and bowed to the departing vehicle.

“Best of luck, Chief Gojiki.”

********

Back at the Complex, with the continuation of their fight confirmed, Naokuu and Tomauchi started approaching one another from the points where they stopped seconds prior. Tomauchi stepped forward with his arms by his side and his fists clenched, while Naokuu stuck his thumbs in his pants pockets.

“AGREEING TO A FIGHT YOU HAVE NO CHANCE OF WINNING. YOU ARE MORE FOOLISH THAN I THOUGHT.”

Naokuu grunted in amusement, smirking at Tomauchi. “What’s _foolish_ is surrendering when I haven’t even reached my limit yet. If I’m gonna die here like you say…”

He came to a stop, planting his feet against the dirt ground with twenty inches between them, and raised his hands up, slamming the right fist against the open left palm.

“…I might as well die fighting.”

Tomauchi came to his own stop, his pause much smoother than his opponent’s. He stared at him for a second, then gave his reply.

“BY ALL MEANS.”

A sharp yet ultimately brief whir came from Tomauchi’s body, and before Naokuu knew it, the cyborg had disappeared from his sight. His grin vanished, a sure recognition of what the blurred motion meant. He dodged to the right, turning around to face where he once was. Sure enough, Tomauchi reappeared, whirring to a stop with his right arm outstretched, hand balled into a fist. Just as immediately, though, he brought up his left fist and attempted to backhand-punch Naokuu in the face while his guard was down. But Naokuu knew what was coming before it hit, and in defense put up his left forearm, blocking the strike. The contact only lasted for a second, no more than two. Before the impact could push past his makeshift guard and break his arm, he swiftly jerked it to the side in favor of pulling back, stepping back further to avoid the chance of getting immediately hit. He inhaled as he stepped back, keeping his eye on Tomauchi in anticipation of how he would strike next.

Tomauchi’s next moves came from his left fist only, in the form of multiple jabs. Naokuu tilted his head and body to the right to dodge the first. He did the same but to the left with the second. For the third, he ducked down, curling his lips into an O-shape and exhaling. He then rushed forward with his back crouched, preparing to throw a punch with his right fist at Tomauchi’s gut. But, as if tempting fate, Tomauchi sidestepped the impact the moment it was thrown, turning himself to face Naokuu as he stumbled past him.

Naokuu’s stumbling didn’t last long. About three steps forward, he pressed his left foot against the surface and turned it to the left, pushing up the dirt as he quickly found his footing again. His right leg glided across the buffer as he turned around, balling his left hand into a punch and throwing it at Tomauchi with a shout. Tomauchi was a good few steps away from where Naokuu’s fist would have hit, but he moved anyways, closer to Naokuu with his own left fist up and ready to punch. He threw it at Naokuu’s face, but that was what the detective wanted, he ducked down and dodged the blow, glancing back with a blink and a grin as his opponent tore through the air that would have been his cheek.

With their mutual attempted blows having finished, they readied themselves for the next strike. Both men jerked their left arms down by their sides, and at the same time lifted up their right arms in readiness to throw another punch. Their feet were planted down, no intent of taking any step forward. Tomauchi wore his monotone scowl, while Naokuu’s grin powered up through thrill alone. With equally little time to prepare themselves, that same time serving as all that was needed, they thrust their fists forward, the impacts inching ever closer together, almost to the point of making direct contact…

********

And yet, not much had changed up in the eleventh floor corner apartment of the Rabaraki Complex. Minutes after his confrontation of them, neither Shin nor the Kunoichi moved from the spots in which they stood the moment he pointed his gun at them. For what it was worth, emotions were not running as high as they had in those beginning moments. Nawa, of course, retained the cool expression she wore for the majority of the morning, looking forward at the sight of a witness to her and her subordinates’ deeds they thought they’d taken care of returning with demands and a weapon as if it were merely part of her normal routine. Tazuna’s surprise had faded, having been displaced by annoyance at how long he was going to keep this up. Fuji tried to keep as straight and unafraid a face as possible, her mask helping a lot with that, though her pensive posture, right hand gripping left elbow and eyes stuck in a glance to her open lids’ extremities, demonstrated the difficulty she faced with this most unprecedented of outcomes.

Even Shin’s fervor upon coming face-to-face with the Kunoichi for the first time since that late night less than a month ago had settled down. The tears in the corners of his eyes dried before they had the chance to stream down, but his glare remained fixed, his arms remaining steady as he pointed the P220 directly at them with only his right hand now on the handle. A standoff where only one party drew weapons, but the other was likely to pull their tools of the trade out if things were to go even further south than where the fact that their opponent actually _had_ a weapon on him pushed that possibility. Nothing happened but the action of waiting. Waiting for either party to make a response that would push them towards something more productive than simply standing still and saying nothing.

Of those two parties, the first to take action beyond waiting was Shin.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” He tilted his gun to the left, pointing at the shoji door to the back room. “One of you walk over there and open it, I don’t have all day.”

A few seconds more passed, the tension thickening. Then, Tazuna closed her eyes, lowered her head, and sighed.

“Fine,” she said as she turned and strolled towards the door. “But I’ll warn you, you won’t like what’s in here.”

“Doesn’t matter, just let me _in_ there already.”

“Pssh, o_kay_.” Tazuna placed her hand on the inner edge of the door, glaring at the shoji in annoyance at Shin’s attitude hard enough to make her eye twitch. “What I wouldn’t _do_ to shut you up right now…” she muttered under her breath.

Shin looked at the door, having turned to both see it and keep his gun trained on Tazuna. A confident glimmer appeared in his eyes, though the overall emotion of seriousness stayed the same. He waited a moment, and then, he lifted his foot off the tatami floor and approached the back room, just as Tazuna started to slide it open.

********

Naokuu tilted backwards in immediate reaction to Tomauchi’s next maneuver, but knew he could only do so for the short amount of time he had before he arrived. So, after taking a brief moment to exhale through his teeth in frustration at the cyborg’s tenacity, he jerked himself to the right, sidestepping out of Tomauchi’s trajectory while he was still airborne. Having leaped from the last place where he stood as their fight moved away from both the Complex entrance and his outer shell, Tomauchi landed inches from where Naokuu once was, immediately turning to face him in his new location and throwing a right-handed punch at him. Naokuu easily moved around the punch and around Tomauchi, stepping backwards with a slight grin resuming presence on his visage. Tomauchi tried to counter with another backhand punch from his left, but the detective stepped back and avoided that one as well.

On cue, Tomauchi rushed at him with another punch from his metal arm waiting in the wings. As with the last several punches, after taking immediate notice, Naokuu turned to dodge. However, instead of using a sidestep to avoid the strike, he dashed off. Heading to the right, further away from the site where the first battle ended and towards the eastern edge of the buffer. He pushed forward, thrusting one arm forward with one stride and the other with the next, repeating those motions. He inhaled and exhaled with each breath, though he looked neither exhausted nor scared. He anticipated Tomauchi would make another move if he saw him retreating.

Which he did. Tomauchi leaped forward, braking to an immediate pause atop one of the discarded impact rounds lodged in the ground, then turning sharply and correcting his course towards Naokuu directly. Without pausing for breath or strategy, Naokuu suddenly veered to the left with a violent jerk as Tomauchi made landfall, kicking up more dust and chunks of earth in the aftermath. Just as quickly, he Naokuu turned to face Tomauchi and rushed at him, readying another punch from his right fist. Tomauchi dodged with a sidestep and halfway rotation to the left, raising his right arm to elbow Naokuu in the back of his neck. But Naokuu dodged that one too, flipping around as he sidestepped to the right with a returning grin. To finish, he stepped backward, grinding his heels against the ground and digging up some of the looser dirt around that space. He clasped both hands together, gripping each one tight as his battle-frenzied smirk widened just a little more, glaring at his opponent with a cocksure thrill.

Tomauchi stopped and recognized Naokuu’s reaction wordlessly. A second later, he raised his head and inhaled through his nostrils.

Naokuu took advantage of that uncharacteristic pause, clasping his hands even tighter as he rushed at Tomauchi and shouted loud as he swung them back. He readied himself to strike him with both hands, this moment in time being his only chance as far as he knew, if not overall he knew, to do so. After pulling them back, he raised them higher, slowing down as he got closer and shouting louder. And then, he swung them down at full force.

But he missed. All his strike hurt was the air in front of him, the air where Tomauchi previously stood. Surprise and frustration didn’t begin to cover Naokuu’s reaction. His eyes were wide, not just from the betrayal of his overconfidence, but from bewilderment at how what would have been his first strike against Tomauchi’s second form ended up like this.

“What the…?”

********

“No… It _can’t_ be…!”

Shin lowered his gun, an extension of the stupefaction that came over his face the moment he looked through the open shoji door with his trembling eyes. By comparison, Tazuna was unsurprised at the sight, though the expression on her face’s exposed half showed a greater sense of caring than the lower half may have suggested.

“Believe me, I’m just as disappointed as _you_ are.” She stepped forward and peered in, her hands behind her back. “If I’d had known it’d end up like _this_… I’d have stopped her from taking so many.”

The back room. Unlit from the inside, illuminated only from the natural light coming in through the main space’s only window, with Shin and Tazuna’s shadows blurrily superimposed on the brightest portions of the tatami floor. Completely empty, not a trace of life to be spotted.

Shin held back the beginnings of a few whimpers of disbelief, but brushed any further development of such a reaction aside with a dissonant grunt. At the same time, he rushed into the room, across the mats already marred with the stray grazes of a bullwhip and under the hooks where the Kunoichi’s victims were rigged. His sights were focused squarely on a sliding door in the back left corner of the room. The entrance to a closet. He grabbed the handle with his free hand and slammed it to the side, gazing in to see if Tazuna’s implied claims about the room were false.

“Here too…”

They weren’t. With just as much trembling in his eyes, and an even greater heart-sinking feeling than before, he gazed down at the closet’s contents. Bundles of rope, rolls of tape in both duct and microfoam varieties, stacks of stretch fabric bandanas, all stashed neatly together in one side. Nothing else. Not on top, not on bottom. Not even any muffled cries. Just silence, save for Shin’s pounding heart and his words, growing more choked up by the second.

“She’s not… She’s not…”

********

“Dammit!” Naokuu grunted, turning his head to look in another direction. “Where the hell’d he go?”

Not only did Tomauchi dodge Naokuu’s earlier strike at an alarmingly high speed, but he had seemed to disappear from the buffer around the Complex entirely. Naokuu was left standing by his lonesome in the middle of the dirt landscape, damaged from west to east by discarded impact rounds, many of which were lodged in the ground, looking in however many directions he possibly could in search of Tomauchi. No whirs could be heard in the open space through the occasional rustle of the wind above the densely packed neighborhood, so he couldn’t have been moving so fast that he couldn’t be seen. He was hiding somewhere. But _where_? Naokuu tried to figure that out, keeping to one place so he’d be able to keep his guard when he eventually _did_ show himself again. But in his heart, he doubted that would last long, even for a few seconds’ duration.

********

“Hey,” Shin growled.

“Hm?” Tazuna perked up, looking forward at the boy as he returned from the back room’s supply closet.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?”

She raised her eyebrow in faux puzzlement. “Oh my, what ever do you _mean_~?”

Her means of answer irked Shin to the point where he stopped in place, just short of where the door frame’s cut into the encompassing shadow of the room began. For emphasis, he stomped against the floor with one foot, snapping many of the reeds making up the mat that took the impact.

“Cut the crap already, you bitch! Tell me where you’re hiding Muchise, right _now_!”

Tazuna stared at Shin, then closed her eyes, scoffing under her mask. “Are you _really_ that dense? What you’ve seen says it all.” She reopened her eyes looking at Shin as he seethed through clenched teeth, vehemently trying to deny the revelation conveyed before him. “But allow me to spell it out for you anyways.”

********

Suddenly, a harsh crash rang throughout the northern buffer. Actually, it wasn’t so much a crash as it was technically a shatter. The impact round Tomauchi used as an intermediary launchpad moments earlier was smashed to pieces, as if something broke through it. Pieces of black iron floated in the air following the destructive force, as if their blowback from the tell-all strike was delayed.

Naokuu’s attention was caught by the unnatural shatter, looking back in realization before turning around to face the mess of pieces. Unlike before, he looked back not in confidence, but in fear. Fear at realizing what type of force he was dealing with in this moment.

And fear at the cause of that force staring him down through the lingering shrapnel.

********

“Your little friend is no longer here.”

********

The impact came fast and hard. His dread further prevented him from so much as attempting to dodge. All he could do now was react. A breathy wheeze of utter pain, his eyes almost bugging out and his head raising up as the air escaped through his teeth and lips, a squeak of increasing pitch being all the sound he could muster.

Such was Naokuu’s response to Tomauchi rushing up to him through what little remained of the impact round that stood in his way and punching him in the gut. It was with his left hand – his human hand – so it didn’t tear him or his torso to pieces, but that didn’t change how much it hurt.

Tomauchi let his fist dig in for a few more seconds, and when that time was up, he jerked his arm to the side and threw Naokuu off of it. He expected him to just hit the ground and flop around like a rag doll. Naokuu did too. But he still had fight in him, even after the fear that preceded and agony that followed the punch. So when he landed, he stayed on his feet, stepping back as he caught his breath and put his hands up, prepared to punch back. He rushed forward, aiming to attack immediately.

But Tomauchi’s strikes kept coming. The cyborg punched the detective in his right cheek, keeping his fist from propelling so much as halfway. He faltered to the side a bit but immediately steadied. Then Tomauchi dealt him an uppercut to the jaw, forcing him to throw his head back. Before he could so much as properly react to even _that_, the third strike post-gut-punch came, this time striking him in the left cheek. He faltered longer, blood flying from his mouth and splattering across the barren ground to his right.

********

“You’re lying…! You’re definitely lying!”

Shin stormed out of the room in a frenzy of further denial at Tazuna’s words, turning to face the ponytailed kunoichi as she stepped to the side to make way for him.

“I _know_ Muchise’s here, she _has_ to be!” He held up his hands, gripping the air with one and his gun with the other, the despair of his situation starting to show through the cracks in his attempt at a refusing façade.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Fuji said, moving her arms back and placing her hands on the windowsill. “But it’s the truth. You can’t keep denying it forever~.” She looked at him with a half-lidded glare, her own effort of persuasion.

Nawa remained as silent as she had all day, straightening up her back some as if that were her mere two cents to the situation unfolding.

********

Tomauchi’s punches and strikes just kept coming at Naokuu, sending him further back towards where the latter half of their overall fight began. Throughout the pushback, Naokuu refused to fall, standing with every fall back he attempted. But thanks to the punches, which made him grunt in a more annoyed form of the pain dealt out, he had trouble keeping his balance, hence the attempts to regain it through stepping back. Sometimes his feet were flat against the ground, other times he was keeping balance on either his heel or the front tip. Either way, the end result remained the same.

In one of the brief lulls between the volley of further impacts, Naokuu thought to defend himself from at least one of them. So he put up his left forearm, hoping it would serve more as a deterrent than an outright shield. But Tomauchi was unfazed. He smacked the makeshift defense aside with his right arm and threw a punch directly at his face with his left. It pushed back Naokuu even further, throwing him even more off-balance than the previous strikes. As he fell back, he closed his eyes as two streams of blood came from his nostrils, joining the scuff marks scattered all across his visage.

********

“I see. If she isn’t _here_, then where _is_ she?”

Shin’s acceptance of the insistent veracity of the Kunoichi was calm, though that did nothing to change his dissatisfaction. After looking down at the ground in reflection, he looked up, glaring at Tazuna, hoping to force an answer out of her with only that.

Tazuna sniggered at Shin’s serious claim, putting her right hand on her hip. “Now why would I tell you _that_?”

“No more excuses!” Shin exclaimed as he raised his hand and pointed his gun at Tazuna’s chest, the alarming nature of the movement making her cockiness fade for a moment with a single blink. “Tell me what I wanna know, or I’ll _kill_ you!” He scowled at her, clenching his teeth tight as his eyes widened, his anger at the situation on full display.

Tazuna looked down at the barrel of Shin’s gun for a second, then back at him. And then, she shrugged, giving the most insincere of replies to his demand.

“Sorry~.”

********

Just as the linear route of his pushback neared its limit, Naokuu took the opportunity to perform another maneuver, one he had pulled off several times earlier in the fight. A sidestep dodge. He jumped back to the right, averting Tomauchi’s next strike. He pushed his sneakers against the ground, bunching up the dirt by his heels, and then took off with a leap towards Tomauchi. He opened his mouth and let out a shout of fury, letting his opponent know he wasn’t going down so easily.

An action corrected by Tomauchi’s next strike. Mid-scream, Naokuu was cut off with an impact to his left side, digging in just as much as the first punch he took since setting foot in Yoyogi. His yell petered out to a gasp of air, deflated by the impact of Tomauchi’s shin against his abdomen. The cyborg too was in midair when the strike landed, his right leg digging in for an extra second before pushing past, miraculously avoiding any damage beyond bruising and possible internal bleeding.

Naokuu flew away from Tomauchi, hitting the ground with a rough impact as intended. But that wasn’t all. The impact against the ground was such that he went into the air again, headed backwards towards one of the doors into the Rabaraki Complex. He smashed through the glass, both between the outside and the vestibule, and between the vestibule and the lobby, making his eventual stoppage inside the building.

********

“Very well. Guess you’re dead, then.”

Shin slipped his index finger through the trigger guard and rested it against the trigger. He didn’t pull it, but with as quiet as the room was, the click that accompanied the contact might as well have been one.

“Wait!” Fuji stepped forward and reached her arm out towards Shin, trying to get him to stop. “Your friend, she’s–!”

“_Am _I?”

Fuji gasped as Tazuna interrupted her, lowering her arm. Nawa blinked, turning her glance away from Fuji and over towards Tazuna as well. But Shin was the most reactionary to Tazuna’s sudden query, his serious glare starting to fade and his mouth opening slightly in confusion.

“You may _talk_ all big, sure,” the ponytailed ninja said as she approached the boy, placing her right hand on his chin and tilting his head back some, which made his confusion turn to nervousness. “But tell me…”

In her current position, Tazuna stood close to Shin, close enough that her breasts pushed against his chest, and the barrel of his P220 pushed against her leotard-clad torso, around where her diaphragm was.

“Are you man enough to pull that trigger?”

********

Seconds after landing on the faux stone-patterned floor of the Complex lobby, Naokuu came to, groaning in pain as he lifted himself from his face-down position. The glass panes he was knocked through were tempered, luckily, so he didn’t have any huge shards sticking out of him. He did, however, have some more scuff marks from the impacts he experienced, plus a couple of small cuts on his arms and face, at least one of the ones on the latter bleeding. For all of the struggle he experienced in his physical recollection of strength, he was still in one piece, and with no severe damage.

Not yet, at least.

Just as he shifted onto his knees and pushed his upper body up further, he heard a crash from the other side of the lobby, just ahead of him. He raised his head to get a good look, but whatever broke through couldn’t be seen. Only the shattered remains of the tempered glass windows separating the vestibule from the lobby on his side were all he could see concerning the results of the crash. Still looking at it, he got on his feet, shrugging off whatever pain he could associate with it, and glared forward in cautious determination, inhaling and exhaling, anticipating where Tomauchi would emerge from this time…

********

“You want vengeance for your friend, right? For being taken, for being _tortured_?”

Tazuna paid the shaky barrel against her spandex-clad skin no mind, looking at Shin with her sensual half-lidded stare, this time serving as accompaniment to her goading.

“Then go on. Shoot me dead. You know you want to~.”

Shin shook in increasing nervousness, clenching his teeth to hold back what he could, and only loosening them to talk back.

“I _am_! I’m gonna do it, I swear!” His gun shook a little more violently to match his body’s own shakes, and his distressed insistencies. “I _will_ shoot you!”

“No, you won’t.”

Shin gasped, his distress rising.

“Look at you. You’re shaking, _trembling_. Just like a scared puppy, one who can’t even _kill_ to survive.”

********

Naokuu reached behind his back and down towards one of his jean pockets, pulling out a 10-round magazine for his P250. A spare cartridge, in the event he exhausted all of the duffel bag’s ammo and still needed to finish the job. This, when he had no chance of going back for all that was left in the bag, was his chance to use it. He pushed it into the underside of the recently unloaded gun, and after cocking the slide, he raised it and pointed it forward, his breaths growing quieter, until he was fully calm.

“Well?” he announced with a scowl. “You gonna show yourself or _not_!?”

********

“Face it, boy. You can’t shoot me.” Tazuna blinked again, lowering her head and looking up at Shin. “You don’t have what it takes.”

Shin grunted again through his gritted teeth, this time in stark realization. Tazuna was right.

********

“Come on out and face me already!” Naokuu shouted, taking another step forward. He kept his gun pointed in one direction for a moment, and then turned to his left by twenty degrees or so, pointing it _that_ way. Wherever he hoped the next crash would emerge from, or where his target would at least make himself visible.

********

Shin pulled his gun back some, just enough such that it wasn’t threatening to puncture Tazuna’s leotard with the barrel alone. But it wasn’t in surrender. If that were the case, his distress would have shot through roof. Same for whatever despair he was feeling in realizing the truth of Muchise’s situation moments earlier. In favor of either whimpering in fear or tearing up, he closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, deeply through his teeth, as if he were calming himself on purpose.

That one action was enough to distress Fuji again, only instead of merely reaching out and trying to reason, she prepared to rush forward.

“Tazuna!”

That cry and two steps was all she took before Nawa held out her left arm, halting her advance. Fuji gasped and looked at her senior kunoichi, wielding her exposed fan and holding it up to her unexposed mouth in observation.

“I see,” Tazuna said, moving back from Shin and closing her eyes. “So _that’s_ what you’ve decided.”

Shin stood with his eyes closed for a moment, maybe two, letting his mind enter the state he felt most ideal for this decisive moment. Seconds passed, and then he was ready. He opened his eyes, glaring forward with the utmost intensity and a soft grunt. He placed his finger back on the trigger, in one last act of readiness before firing.

And that’s when her arm, clad in a fingerless glove, came speeding at him from his left, faster than he could react to.

********

The corner wall behind Naokuu suddenly burst apart into a mess of broken plaster, much of which then dissipated into a cloud of dust. It caught his attention, this opportunity to face Tomauchi once more, now that he made his move into the open. Without delay, he turned around and pointed his gun in the direction of the broken wall.

But before he could so much as see whether he was there or not, Tomauchi struck him in the face, his right shin pushing against his target’s left cheek. He swept it across, much like before avoiding tearing through him and killing him right there. But the quick and forceful impact sent Naokuu flying through the lobby. One hand escaped the grasp he had on his gun while the other held on for dear life. He flipped around in mid-air, spending the majority of the blowback upside-down. Everything went past him like smear frames from an old cartoon, so much so that he felt like he’d have become one of them had he kept going like that. Eventually, he reached the end of the lobby, going through the open door Shin left open upon his entrance into the Complex, and crashing through the one that sent him from the vestibule to the outside world. And yet, despite that break, he just kept going, into the unscathed southern buffer of the Complex property, the world through his eyes reversed.

But he had no time to contemplate anything. Within his flipped vision, he saw Tomauchi running into the buffer as well, across the flattened earth with his arms behind his back and speed he could actually keep track of, even if he were stationary and right-side up. He grunted in irritation, thrusting his gun down – from his perspective, up – and pointing it at Tomauchi. He fired three shots, each with brief pause between them.

Tomauchi just sped up, outrunning the bullets and leaving them to hit the ground, kicking up dust. As he did, his direction veered, towards the left and towards Naokuu. And then, he vanished again with another whir. Naokuu’s scowl widened in frustration at losing him, but unlike before, he had no extra time for preparation. Tomauchi was no longer toying around. He appeared behind Naokuu and hit him with a back kick from his left leg, sending him crashing to the ground meters before he could reach the asphalt perimeter. He smacked face-first against the ground, bouncing up in pained response.

But Tomauchi wasn’t done. He appeared again to Naokuu’s right, and at the moment of his materialization, he kneed Naokuu in the stomach, in a reverse hands-off version of a backbreaker. This caught Naokuu the most off-guard, his eyes bugging out in shock and his partly closed mouth twitching in shock. He kept it closed for as long as he could, but in seconds, he unclenched his teeth and opened it wide, a reactionary gasp and a splash of blood escaping in unison.

Tomauchi jerked his leg upwards, completing the frontbreaker and sending Naokuu up. Past the surrounding buildings, past the Rabaraki Complex, he found himself going higher and higher into the blue sky above Yoyogi, with no way to control how high he would go and how far he would come back down.

Matching the irregularity of his situation, Naokuu’s ascent was visible from outside, and even inside Yoyogi, assuming the latter sighting was from the right place. One such place was from one of the roads heading from the southeast entrance near Sendagaya towards the Complex property, through the window to the sky between the five-story buildings on either side and above those in the distance signaling the inevitable change in direction.

Such was the sight from the front windshield of the squad car leading the raid into Shimizu territory.

“What the hell is _that_!?” Azaguro exclaimed, leaning forward as he gripped the steering wheel.

“Looks like we’re getting close,” Natsutaka added.

Gojiki simply grinned at what he could see of the sight from his even more limited vantage point, knowing in his gut what he was seeing. His arms crossed once more, he raised his head and shouted a command.

“Sound the siren, men! Let ‘im know that we’re here!”

“Yes, sir!” the two proclaimed in unison.

Concurrent with his latter words but before their own, the flashing siren atop the lead car was once again joined by loud blaring, the vehicles behind following suit as they continued down the one-lane road leading them to their ultimate destination.

********

With a single action, the situation in the apartment completed its inevitable change.

The P220 left Shin’s hands, falling to the ground in what seemed like a slow descent.

Fuji’s eyes were wide with genuine shock at the scene before her, backing up in both a demonstration of that emotion and a show of resistance against pushing past the still-stationary Nawa’s arm.

In the time after he steeled his wavering resolve, Shin stood before Tazuna. But only for a brief moment. He physically wavered to the right, beginning to fall just as his gun did. He failed to pull the trigger. Tazuna struck first, hitting him right in the neck with a chop from her right hand. She looked at him as he fell, eyes half-lidded not in teasing, but in disappointment.

Shin’s gaze was, meanwhile, was focused nowhere. Though his eyes weren’t blank, or even glazed over, the glassy look his orbs took post-impact made either alternative appropriate. Even with his eyes wide open, his teeth clenched yet loosening enough to let some saliva escape, he was already unconscious.

And so he descended as well, right side first, inching closer and closer to the tatami surface to join the gun he never got the chance to use.

Thud.

********

All was silent above the Rabaraki Complex, standing stationary in the middle of Yoyogi, surrounded by the dirt buffer that further exemplified its status as an oasis zone. The commotion from inside the Kunoichi’s eleventh-floor hideout, the growing number of sirens to the south… All of them might as well have been dead noise to Naokuu, floating in the air with the blue expanse to his back, what clouds there were before having shrunken or faded away. It was all clear. In taking the brunt of Tomauchi’s true abilities, freed of the shackles of his cybernetic exoskeleton, he realized the futility of defeating him. And the climax of futility, being launched into the air with no natural choice but an assuredly fatal descent, was all he needed to accept that realization. All that was left was to float, staring down with a half-dead gaze at the level landscape where he would make his final impact. With no words, he accepted that fate.

But fate had other plans.

As silent to him as all else below his fifty-meters high peak of ascent, Tomauchi whirred into presence behind him, poised for attack. He spun around, bending one leg and stretching another, and then struck Naokuu in the back.

With that, he was knocked back to his senses, as he experienced a backwards, downwards trajectory towards the ground. After letting himself be pushed back without moving his own muscles, he changed the position of his landing mid-air. Spinning around so he was upright, arms to either side and legs spread with feet pointing downward, he readied himself to accept his new pose of touchdown. His feet hit the ground first, and he skidded backwards across the southern buffer, all the way to the western perimeter. His heels touched down, and once they hit the exposed edge of the asphalt road to his back, he stopped.

Not a second later, Tomauchi made his touchdown as well, a cloud of dust three stories in height kicking up upon impact. Another second passed, and his shadow appeared behind the cloud, his self emerging not long after.

Naokuu couldn’t help but growl through clenched teeth at the sight of his opponent. Once hopeless, his emotions once again took control, in the form of one last act of defiance. He brought his hands together, left pressed against the right that still held on to the handle of his gun, and he screamed in fury. He pulled the trigger seven times, not even giving a chance to pause between each one. He couldn’t waste any more time with his attacks. If he couldn’t take him out with all he had left, he might as well have stood no chance.

What happened next was inevitable. Tomauchi raised his right arm and swatted each bullet away. First to the left, then to the right, then the left again, then the right again, left, right, and finally down. The final bullet was backhanded so hard into the dirt ground that it shattered the surface, sending up a smaller dust cloud. He walked past that inadvertent obstacle as well, completely unfazed.

The P250 fell to the ground with a harsh series of simultaneous clicks. Naokuu didn’t bother pulling the trigger to confirm he was out of ammo, nor did he bother to unload the empty magazine he used as his last resort. The returning dismay to his face confirmed it once and for all. Defeating Tomauchi with as little as he had really _was_ a futile effort.

Tomauchi took a few more steps forward, and then…

“TIME TO FINISH THIS.”

…he stopped. As calmly as he did when he signaled the start to the latter half of the battle, he paused without emphasis just beyond the west end of the Complex, and likewise raised his right arm, palm facing outwards at Naokuu. What happened afterwards, however, went against the casual nature of its precession. His fingers bent backward, parallel to his forearm. His thumb bent to the right, likewise. Four portions of the exterior structure of his forearm – top, bottom, left and right – popped up, the ends closest to the hand level with the rest but the opposites jutting out by four inches. Their insides proceeded to glow, the sound of an efficient revving motor accompanying the blue glow. A hole opened in his palm and glowed blue as well, also emitting a shrill whir.

It was an internal arm-mounted firearm, a railgun with no projectile but the energy powering it up. An equal, if not greater, assured fatality.

Naokuu blinked once, his dismay fading. He blinked again, this time smiling.

“So, this is how I’m gonna die, huh? Better than dropping dead to overwork, I guess.”

He then straightened his posture, closed his eyes, lifted his chin, and held his arms out to either side. The fullest show of acceptance regarding his fate. Demise at the hand of an opponent he got in over his head with.

Naokuu remained standing as Tomauchi’s finishing weapon continued to charge, the blue glow of the barrel shining brightly on his face, overtaking the brightness of the morning sun beating down on him. Still smiling, sadly and peaceably, he was left with his thoughts.

“_Well, this is it for me, Shin. But it’s okay. Even though it’s ending like this, it’s _okay_. Because I know… I know I made a difference here today, and I made it through _you_._” His shut eyes became tighter, and his smile wider, a tear forming in the left corner. “_I can go knowing that _you_ succeeded, Shin! That _you_ saved Muchise!_”

With that, the single tear of combined sadness and joy rolled down his cheek. He was ready.

********

But Shin did nothing. He merely laid unconscious on the floor of the Rabaraki Complex’s sole occupied residential unit. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly ajar, and his arms having taken the impermanent brunt of what would have been an uncomfortable fall. The anger, the denial, the despair in his face had all but vanished. All that was left was the indeterminate expression of a young man put under against his will, unaware of everything. His own emotions, his partner’s actions outside, and even the bickering that took place above his body.

“Dammit, Tazuna! What the hell were you _thinking_!? You were _this_ close to getting yourself killed! I can’t believe you could be so _reckless_!”

“You should know by now _not_ to underestimate me, Fuji.”

“Err…” Fuji grunted, a small bead of sweat forming on the side of her head, and then looked down in further shame at her overreaction.

“Now come on,” Tazuna resumed, lifting up Shin by his left arm and resting it over her shoulder, while Nawa did the same with his right. “Let’s get out of here before the policeman shows up.”

“R-Right,” Fuji responded with a nod. “Still, that doesn’t change how worried sick you made me…”

“Keep saying stuff like that and there’ll be a whole _lot_ more for you to worry about~!”

Fuji shrieked in semi-playful worry. “Sorry, Tazuna!”

The wind shifted by the window as the Kunoichi finished their two-sided conversation, and then they, and Shin, were gone. The apartment the trio called their hideout was once again empty, for the first time in what felt like a long time free of human life. As temporary as it might be, that fact was as obvious as the ring-shaped LED shoji lamp hanging above the main space, which had not seen use in the time the room had existed, occupied or otherwise. It, the other contents in the room, and the faint sirens from the other side of the Complex were all the space had left.

********

Outside, Naokuu remained standing in the position he took, awaiting his end. But that end appeared to be taking its time. The whirring from Tomauchi’s arm continued to sound with no climax in sight. What’s more, other sounds entered his audial periphery. The concluding wails of sirens, immediately switched out for a familiar voice relayed via megaphone.

“Attention! This is the police! Put down your weapon and put your hands behind your head, otherwise we _will_ shoot you!”

“Huh?” Naokuu quietly muttered in confusion, not just at the delay in his fate but the unexpected intervention. He opened his eyes and glanced to the right. Noticing right away that wouldn’t cut it, he turned his head as well. “What the…”

“I repeat!” Gojiki shouted through the megaphone he held up to his mouth. “Put down your weapon and put your hands behind your head, or we _will_ shoot you!”

Parked along the asphalt perimeter directly off to where Tomauchi and Naokuu both stood was the force of vehicles from the Shibuya Police that embarked for Yoyogi less than an hour earlier. The squad car Gojiki arrived in was parked furthest down, siren flashing but no longer blaring. The same applied to the other squad cars, parked to the initial car’s left in a single-file line. Some of the remainder, though, parked behind the two buses, which parked directly behind the initial squad car. The riot gear-clad officers that boarded either bus had gotten out and lined up in two rows, the front crouched and the back standing. Both had shields and weapons at the ready, though they alternated. One officer holding up a shield, the other pointing a weapon through, another holding a shield on the opposite side, then another weapon-wielder, and so on and so forth. Officers from the remaining squad cars got out but kept cover behind their vehicles, watching the confrontation from their perspectives. As for Gojiki himself, he stood to the left of the impromptu riot squad, between the bus and his squad car.

The sight of all the officers telling Tomauchi to stand down – to save him, as far as he knew – left Naokuu speechless. All he could do was stand in his position and watch the scene play out before him, one that he couldn’t possibly believe was real, though it was.

“I can’t make myself any clearer! Make one move against _him_ or _us_, and you’re as good as dead! Do you understand!?”

Tomauchi looked on as well, the whirring in his arm dying down but remaining persistent, the glow fading. As expected from the expressions he displayed from the moment of his activation, he was nonplussed, displeased with the continued intrusions. He glared at the officers through his visor, and then turned to face them, lowering his arm.

“INSIGNIFICANT PESTS.”

Gojiki growled under his breath, raising his eyebrow in puzzlement to accompany his main emotion of instinctive anger.

“FOR YOUR INTERRUPTION, I WILL DISPOSE OF YOU FIRST.” He raised his arm again, pointing it at the group of officers, the whirring once more growing louder and the blue glow from the barrel of his arm-blaster brightening to life.

Gojiki’s response to that was also instinctive.

“Fire _now_!!!”

Those under his command were more than willing to oblige. Not a second after being given the order, those in riot gear with rifles in their hands pulled their triggers and began their fire. The semi-automatics filled the air with an uproar of rat-a-tats, all aimed directly at Tomauchi.

At first, Tomauchi remained steadfast, paying no mind to the initial volleys as he continued to charge his finishing weapon. All aimed at his chest, he grunted as the bullets hit, producing tiny blood splashes that came from the holes in both his skin and his clothes. Still, he viewed the embedding projectiles as nothing more than an infestation of annoyances.

That changed when one of the bullets hit his right shoulder, right where the cybernetic arm met his flesh. The impact brought about not just a bloody splash, but a spark of electricity. Tomauchi’s grunt was harsher, and as if it were instinctive, the whirring and glowing died down again, as he lowered his arm in reaction.

A reaction that left him open for the streams of ammo that followed.

Unlike when he stood still, his focus on powering the blast he hoped would tear through the bullets heading his way, those same bullets forced him to respond with more than just indifferent grunts of acknowledgement. They were more pronounced, more pained. The seemingly endless spray kept him too busy reacting through further physical movement, stepping away in response to the bullets’ strikes rising above all else, to so much as dodge or deflect them. He made an attempt with his left arm, but it too got caught up in the bloodening crossfire. His right, meanwhile, hung limp, from the moment the bullet caused the spark that shut it down. The further he was pushed back, the further the bullets went on impact. Most of them embedded in his skin, but some managed to burst through the back of his torso, one in the right side of his chest and the other through the left side of his abdomen, both with bloody splashes as large as the exit wounds and stains seeping into his sleeveless shirt. Those shots in particular appeared to come from shotguns as opposed to the semi-automatic fire that only deterred him.

It soon reached the point where one of the officers among the firing squad raised another different weapon. A rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Painted black like the rest of their firearms, it was thrust down from the pointed-up position it arrived in and fired not long after. As the warhead began its journey towards Tomauchi, the rifle fire and the shotgun blasts came to a halt. He lingered for a moment as the shots and by proxy his backwards traversal stopped, leaning back as he tried to gasp for breath in spite of the holes that were undoubtedly in his lungs. Before he could finish his attempted inhale, the RPG reached its target, slamming against his abdomen, just above the hole blasted into it by one of the shotguns. He lingered there too, looking down as he let out a long drone of a groan, disbelieving of what wound up being his own fate.

And then came the boom. The warhead exploded after its tip spun against Tomauchi’s torso for a moment, the cloud of yellow and orange fire obscuring and overshadowing whatever fate the cyborg himself had. The breaking of metal hidden within the pounding blast indicated that it was to some degree serious, if not outright fatal. Still, the cloud burst forth immediately, the yellow and orange flames akin to a cumulus cloud reaching three stories of the Complex behind it in height, soon fading to a smoky black.

The uniformed officer standing to the left of the leftmost riot soldier in the back row lowered his weapon, exhaling a breath of impression and relief as the resonance left behind by the blast died down. The other officers lowered their weapons, while Tomauchi observed the explosion with his left elbow against his head and his right hand, holding the megaphone, hanging by his side.

Naokuu turned his head back and glanced at the after effects of the Shibuya Police’s finishing blow against Tomauchi, the expression of speechlessness on his face the same, but with a greater sense of calmness than when he first noticed the situation that saved him from a dignified death. He couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief once he was able to find the words for this unprecedented turn of events, lowering his head and his arms.

“Whew, that was a close one…”

“Grab him!” Gojiki shouted in the distance.

“Eh?” Naokuu opened his right eye and glanced over in the direction of the cavalcade. Once he caught sight of who Gojiki was addressing, he yelped through his teeth as he turned to face them, holding his up again, this time bent with the palms facing outward. A smart move.

Azaguro and Natsutaka rushed across the dirt buffer towards Naokuu in a beeline, the latter pulling out a pair of handcuffs as they moved closer.

Azaguro was the first to reach Naokuu, grabbing his right arm and pulling it down and behind his back. Naokuu grunted in response, then grunted again as Natsutaka followed a second later, doing the same with his left hand.

“Sorry ‘bout this, Tanoshiba,” Azaguro said with ambiguous sincerity, closing his eyes and grinning. “It’s just procedure, y’know?”

Naokuu glanced at Azaguro and scowled at him as Natsutaka put the handcuffs on his wrists. Once they were fitted, he grabbed him by the cuffs and pushed him forward, walking with him as he made a much more formal greeting, and one appropriate to the situation at that.

“Officer Naokuu Tanoshiba, you are under arrest for violation of your suspension. You have the right to remain silent, and you have the right to an attorney.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Naokuu muttered. “I know my rights…”

As Natsutaka walked Naokuu back to the squad car, with Azaguro walking beside them, Gojiki looked straight at them. Straight at Naokuu. He smirked in satisfaction, grunting out a snicker under his breath.

“Mission accomplished.”

The Kunoichi had retreated with Shin in tow. Gojiki and his men were moments away from departing with Naokuu in their custody. Tomauchi was destroyed. And the Rabaraki Complex, still standing despite all that happened, knew what those three outcomes meant.

That it and its property’s role as a battleground this morning of April 15th, 2084 was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. For those really curious, the height limit for the specific underpass on Yoyogi’s border is 3.5 meters, or 11.5 feet.


	3. Act 2

After being subjugated to darkness for a period of time he couldn’t consciously measure, he opened his eyes. His waking vision was blurry, an inevitability after spending the past several hours in a forced sleep. In those initial moments, what he saw before him was unrecognizable, a web of dark green laid across a soft yellow background. But with a blink and a groan or two to wake himself further, the scene slowly unobscured. The dark green web were deciduous tree branches covered in the first leaves of spring. The soft yellow background was the sky above, either surrounding or filtered through the branches.

This was the sight that greeted Shin as he woke up on the wooden park bench that served as his bed for the preceding hours. He squinted at the mess of pre-bloom boughs above, holding his right forearm to his forehead to protect his eyes from the brightness he had yet to grow accustomed to, now that he regained consciousness. He kept like that for a few seconds, and once he was ready, he shifted his position. First he sat up from his lying position, then he pivoted to the left, placing his feet on the ground. And then, he raised his arms and stretched, closing his eyes again and opening his mouth wide as he let out a tired yawn. After which, he brought his hands down and placed them in his lap.

The park in which he found himself was small, serving more as a place of play for the young and rest for the older than a true preservation of the natural environment. The ground within park lines was relatively flat, exposed earth. A familiar sight in a smaller scale with less negative connotations. Separating that dirt ground from the asphalt street it was situated along was a brick sidewalk with low-rising permanently fixed metal barricades shaped like an A but with a flat surface on top instead of a point situated closer to the road. The park itself consisted of two benches and a swing set on the far left edge, three large deciduous trees separating it from the adjacent houses, and a playground set with a climbing ramp, a green slide and monkey bars to the right of the swing set. In the corner where the right edge met the sidewalk was a sandbox. Some bushes populated the middle of the park-sidewalk border, but other than that, it was empty space for running around and group activity. Sitting on the second park bench, the one directly next to the swing set, Shin was the only one in the park in this late afternoon hour, the yellow sky indicating that sunset was drawing near.

As he rested his hands, he looked to the left, taking notice of something he felt when he woke up. A piece of reading material placed under his head as a makeshift pillow. But instead of something more comfortable like a magazine or a manga, what was there was a scroll. A thick handheld scroll with a teal exterior, the kind ninja would use for relaying messages or small-scale summonings. Shin reached over with his left hand and picked up the scroll, looking down at it and the black ink label on its outer body.

少年に取って

To the Boy

Shin stared at the scroll for a moment longer. The glare he gave it was one of surefire recognition, regarding the authors of the contents within as opposed to the contents themselves. But the anger that would have normally been there was gone. It was more of a downcast glare than anything else. He waited a little longer, and then, he brought his right hand forward, hovering towards the scroll’s corner edge on the lower left side. He then grabbed that edge, rustling the parchment as he prepared to pull it back.

********

“I never thought I’d see the day. _You_ sitting on the other side of this table.”

The interrogation room was lit only by a single center lamp hanging above the aforementioned table, brightening it but not the rest of the room, leaving the darkness with a green tint. Boxed in by four soundproof concrete walls, one of which had a door on the far end and a two-way mirror taking up the remaining length. There were two chairs. Sitting in one was Gojiki, his left forearm resting on the cool surface. The other was occupied by Naokuu, whose hands were re-cuffed in front with the chain connecting each half of his solitary binds running through a metal bar built into the table, preventing him from moving them very far. He didn’t mind the situation, at least not any more than one in his situation reasonably would. The stare he gave Gojiki as he sat still made any frustration at that predicament alone next to nil.

“I’ll admit, the eyes I put on you made me _certain_ you’d give up your hopeless ambitions for good,” Gojiki continued, eliciting no more reaction than a single blink from the man across. “But not only did you give my men the slip, you actually broke your way into the Shimizu’s territory and fought their secret weapon head-on, an action that forced us to break our abstinence agreement with them _just_ so we didn’t have to apprehend a corpse, all for one girl who’s probably dead by now. I’d say you’ve got guts, if I didn’t hate them already.”

“Gee, thanks for the compliment,” Naokuu sarcastically remarked.

“That’s _all_ the good you’re getting out of _me_, Tanoshiba. What you did today went _beyond_ mere insubordination. You’re looking at hard time for your actions, as hard as it can _get_ for punks like you.” He then smirked, grunting in amusement. “If I’m lucky, they’ll ditch the key after locking you up.” He closed his eyes, lowered his head, and started to snicker wickedly through his teeth.

And after a few seconds, Naokuu started to laugh as well, a quieter chuckle that was loud enough to be heard in the mostly empty room, even with his head lowered.

And then, Gojiki’s laughter stopped. His smirk faded. He looked up at Naokuu, puzzled but also annoyed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing,” Naokuu said, raising his head and resuming his glare at Gojiki, with greater intent. “Just that you _seriously _think that’s what’ll happen.”

Gojiki grunted in annoyed awe, furrowing his brow as he glowered at Naokuu, who once more lowered his head.

“Tell me, what exactly did I _do_? Trespass on _criminal_ territory? Kill a couple yakuza in self-defense?” He raised his head and glared at him again. “No kangaroo court would give me life _or_ death for that! Assuming they actually _convict_ me. And if they _do_? Fine! _Let_ ‘em throw me in jail! I’ll be out in a few years anyway!” He pressed his hands against the table and leaned forward. “And the moment they _do_ set me free, I’ll get back to it. Back to saving girls like Muchise, back to putting the serial kidnappings to an end, back to making a _difference _in this country.”

His glare towards Gojiki intensified, his irises starting to flicker between a dull red and a brighter shade. Likewise, his grin widened in conceit.

“And there’s not a damn thing you can _do_ about it.”

Gojiki growled under his breath as his brow furrowed further, his frustration with Naokuu’s rant only growing.

“Face it, Gojiki. All going to prison means is I’ll finally be _free_ of your corrupt bullshit. And if you _try_ to prove me wrong by arresting me _again_, you _know_ I’m just gonna keep it up, no matter _how_ many times you try.” He pulled his head back and turned to the side, closing his eyes as he let another smirk slip. “Yeah, you could say that’s insubordinate. But what other choice _is_ there? If that’s how it is, I might as well _be_ that way ‘til the end!” He lifted his hands as high as they could go and then slammed them on the table as he leaned in once again, giving off one last manic grin. “I’ll be free to do everything you and your drones can’t be assed to! How’s _that_ for insubordination, you rat bastard!?”

Gojiki’s fist tensed up as Naokuu finished off, but despite that, it remained prone to twitching, resistance of the urge to make any motion of any kind. After a few seconds of twitching, it paused, clenching as hard as it could. He inhaled through his nostrils, then exhaled, and at that time…

…he smiled.

“Well said.”

“Hn?”

Naokuu blinked in confusion, straightening his posture as his grin faded completely. The puzzlement he felt at Gojiki’s words was so great, that at first he didn’t even notice him reaching forward with a key in hand and unlocking one of the cuffs.

“Consider yourself pardoned.”

Gojiki moved his hands over to Naokuu’s other hand and unlocked the other cuff to match. Naokuu looked down at his actions, his incertitude only rising. So much so, that he couldn’t abstain from asking any longer than he absolutely had to. His gaze returned to Gojiki, and so he asked…

“Hey, what gives? You can’t be serious about this.”

“Oh, but I _am_,” Gojiki replied, pulling his arms back and stashing the key away in his left pants pocket. “The moment you leave this room, it’ll be as if your arrest never even happened.”

“But _why_ though? Why let me go after what I said?”

“You said it yourself, Tanoshiba,” Gojiki said, putting his hands back on the table. “Putting you away would only mean your freedom.”

Naokuu scowled in immediate understanding of Gojiki’s meaning of his own words, looking at him as he pulled his hands away from where the cuffs remained and listening to what followed.

“I get it now. You’re not just insubordinate towards _me_. You’re insubordinate in _general_. Someone who does as they please, authority be damned.” He brought his hands together, intertwining them together as he stared Naokuu down with a wicked grin to match. “And as luck would have it, I have _ways_ of fixing that flaw of yours, down to the core.”

“That so? Then lay it _on_ me!” Naokuu exclaimed, pushing his chair back as he stood from it, fingers pressed against the table in impatience. “What punishment could _possibly_ be better than _jail_!?”

“The particulars will come in due time. Just know that from this point on…” He raised his head and shot him his most self-satisfied look to date. “…your days of trying to make a change in society are _over_.”

Naokuu’s scowl only intensified, but only a gentle grunt of frustration accompanied it. No words, no further indications of anger. Just disappointment at the situation he was faced with, that which he had to take under risk of having Gojiki’s backhanded generosity reversed, filtered through his resolute opinion of the man.

With a soft grunt, Gojiki leaned back in his seat, his hands moving to his lap as he eyed Naokuu, moving away from the table and towards the side, preparing to pass him.

“So, any last words before entering this ‘new phase’ of yours?”

“Yeah,” Naokuu remarked, sharply yet quietly, passing by Gojiki as he glanced back at him. “Go to hell, asshole.”

After that, he paused, waiting for the man’s response. Gojiki’s eyes closed and his grin faded, a displeased yet nonetheless restrained frown taking its place.

“Just get the hell outta here.”

Naokuu looked back at Gojiki through the corner of his eye for a second more, and with a blink and a widened scowl, he glanced back, his response only appropriate.

“Gladly.”

********

Back in the small streetside park, the once empty atmosphere beyond the one bench had gotten livelier, if only by a miniscule amount. Apart from the chirps of critters audible from the area but sourced away from its extremities, there were also the sounds of children. Their footsteps racing across the open dirt field, and their voices partaking in conversation.

“Race you to the top!”

“Oh yeah? You’re _on_!”

The two children, a girl and boy respectively, giggled as they dashed over to the wooden equipment to play. The orange sky, mostly clear but with clouds drifting in, represented the ten minutes or so before the sun would fall behind the western horizon, so naturally it gave them a decent indication of the time limit they had before having to head home. As they headed off to use that time, Shin remained seated on the bench, holding open the scroll he found alongside him. The main body in his left, the edge of the paper in his right, he stared at the parchment for what felt as long as the time he took opening it to begin with.

He narrowed his gaze after another moment, and with that, he followed through with his intentions.

“‘Dear boy…’”

拝啓. Written in black ink, the address to him from the scroll’s authoresses started the letter. Written right to left, text scrolling down, and in alternating colors of permanent marker for each speaker.

First was Nawa, in pale pink.

どうも。我らのこの前遭遇以来、それはしばらくねえ？

**“Hello again. It has been a while since our last encounter, has it not?”**

Next was Tazuna, in magenta.

隠れ家に銃でぶつかる白銃で乱入、ショックだった！

**“Seeing you barge into our hideout with gun ablazing was quite the surprise!”**

And then came Fuji, in pastel purple.

前回の出来事の後、それを予測したはずです。

**“Though given your track record, we probably should’ve seen it coming.”**

Shin remained still on the bench, only moving his right hand to roll up what parts of the scroll he already read, and his left to unroll the other end further, all while continuing to read with a lowered head and solemn frown.

**“We’d have greeted you more properly were it earlier, but certain circumstances prevented us from doing so. Thus, we’re speaking to you now through more belated means.”**

More early evening clouds continued to drift in from overhead, appearing dark against the orange backdrop as a result of shadow, not foreboding weather. They hung not just over Shin’s head, but also those of the others who played a part in the events in Yoyogi that morning, and those affected by its consequences.

**“So let’s start by stating the obvious, shall we? Ahem…”**

To start, there were those in Yoyogi itself, starting from the Rabaraki Complex, where a murder of crows, numbering ten or twelve total, took flight from one of the rooftops past the property’s outer perimeter. They left in an expected V-shaped formation, several of them cawing over one another.

**“You’re an idiot!”**

**“Yeah! A huge dummy!”**

**“An out-and-out fool.”**

The Kunoichi stood on the rooftop corner above their hideout within the Complex building, looking out in the same direction of the crows’ departure at what could be seen of the taller structures beyond Yoyogi’s outer edges. Nawa stood in the middle, with one arm tucked under her chest and the other holding her fan. Fuji stood to her left, one step forward, her hands on her hips and a slight sense of worry on her face. Tazuna stood to her right, one step back, just one hand on her hip.

**“I mean, seriously! We warned you _twice_ not to get involved with us, but did you listen? Nooooooo! Instead, you just _ignored_ our _thorough_ warnings and kept coming after us like a complete _moron_!”**

The sound of a loud revving engine, likely the same sound that made the crows loitering earlier take off, from the other side of the Complex caught Tazuna’s attention. She looked back out of subdued annoyance, accompanied by the slightest inklings of curiosity.

On the south side of the building, a dark green Isuzu dump truck with a steel gray bed drove off of the dirt buffer and towards the asphalt perimeter, in the direction of the southeast corner from which it arrived. One of the remaining police cruisers on the property took off in front of the truck, while another took off behind it. Without a doubt, the bed of the truck contained Tomauchi’s remains and was being escorted by the lingering squad cars for precautionary security.

**“Even if it _was _to save your friend, you should’ve given up after we had our way with you! Especially after we used your school friends as our bound and gagged messengers!”**

At the same time, several more dump trucks of the same make and color scheme departed from the north side, closer to the perimeter where the damage done was not as serious. Rather, they were already in the process of departure. There were five trucks, each with a squad car separating them, and one on either end of the line, sirens flashing but no sound coming out. Unlike the truck on the south side, the contents in the beds of these trucks were a little more obvious. Large collections of metal and iron debris, whole impact rounds, and large mechanical limbs belonging to Tomauchi’s exoskeleton. The rear truck even had Tomauchi’s left hand and part of his forearm sticking out of the top.

Eventually, the last of the vehicles in line pulled away from the north buffer, leaving the Complex to stand above the remainder of the oasis zone. It saw more damage in one day – one hour, even – than it did in the fifty-plus years prior. Even the structure itself saw disturbance, with the third to fifth floors seeing damage from Tomauchi’s impact round storage cylinders flying into it, some of them still embedded in the shattered windows. It wasn’t exactly peace, but all things considered, it had to do.

**“Yet for all your folly, it deserves congratulation.”**

Then, there was northern Yoyogi. A large room befitting for being filled the entirety of the Shimizu clan’s attack forces. Which it was, albeit in the least ideal of circumstances. The walls of the space were lined with those injured in the invasion on their territory. Some were alright save for areas that required bandaging; arms, legs, the upper right side of their head, et cetera. Others had injuries serious enough that they had to lie down on the floor and recover that way. One such yakuza breathed in and out from his mouth, to ensure himself he was still alive. The middle of the room also had several of those in the latter category, bandaged in multiple places at once. The ponytailed yakuza that was at the front of the grenade blast had bandages all over his face, with just one eye and his headpiece exposed. He seemed to be out of it, but not as much as those in the deceased party. For them, their bodies were covered with black tarps, one for each man. The only uninjured yakuza of the bunch, Komori, knelt by one of the tarps, clenching his teeth as he held his arm to his eyes. Trembling, he tried to wipe the tears that flowed from under his shades, but they just kept coming back.

**“You were the very first individual to learn of our existence and actions, and go free with that knowledge in hand.”**

** “I’ll admit, a good part of that was _my_ fault, hehe…”**

**“And you took advantage of that knowledge for all it was worth.”**

Watching over the room was Tetsushiro Shimizu, still dressed in his morning clothes and with a cane in hand. His gaze was one of disappointment, yet also sympathy. But those feelings faded as another uninjured man of his came up behind him, from the sunset-tinted hallway that lit the otherwise dark space. The undercover cop from Shibuya that had infiltrated their ranks, still keeping his true identity under wraps while in the presence of his “boss”. Shimizu glanced at him and asked him a question. What he had to say. The false yakuza responded with a single sentence.

**“Any fool would rush headlong into yakuza territory to take back what they claim is rightfully theirs.”**

**“But only a true madman would actually succeed in reaching his goal, as impossible as it seemed.”**

His response caught Shimizu off-guard. The yakuza boss’s eyes widened, the grip on his cane tightening as well. He turned to the impromptu messenger and glared at him, his eyes trapped between a consistent tremble and series of twitches. The news he received, concerning the actions that followed the death and injury of much of his attack forces, was the last thing he either wanted or needed in that moment.

**“You even got the police on your side! That took some major guts!”**

And then there was the Shibuya Police Building. Naokuu walked down one of several hallways in a series leading away from the interrogation room, heading towards the main lobby that would take him to his exit. The parting remarks Gojiki made left him uneasy, but he suppressed those feelings, departing casually. Being cleared of any criminal wrongdoing didn’t make him feel relieved or glad, but it didn’t bog him down with negative emotions either, despite the unspoken alternatives he was teased with.

But then he saw something in the hallway. He quietly gasped, slowing to a stop, and then lowered his head, looking away from the passerby who caught his sight, and hiding himself from being caught by theirs.

**“Alas, for all the trouble you went to, you still came up short.”**

That passerby was Detective Yokoshima. Emerging from the sunset-tinged lobby, he entered the hallway, lit by fluorescent tiles embedded in the dropped ceiling, and walked towards his mentee. But he didn’t approach him. He walked past, keeping the same pace he entered with. Still, he acknowledged his presence, but only after he was past. He glanced back at Naokuu, mouth open and eyes tinged with worry. For both the situation he found himself in moments earlier, and whatever laid beyond that. He wanted to express that concern to him directly, but he knew it wouldn’t be of any help. So he glanced back, channeling his focus on his destination, wherever that was.

**“Face it, boy, you failed to save the girl. All the time I had to play with her, to abuse her to my heart’s content, and you waited ‘til that time was _over_ to go and save her. You _idiot_!”**

Avoiding contact with his mentor was just as hard on Naokuu as it was on Yokoshima himself. He kept looking down, his eyes trembling and his lips pursed shut. He wanted to speak to him just as much, but with the most humiliating consequence of his bold raid hanging over his head and his alone, coupled with the uncertainty he was saddled with upon his forced leave from Yoyogi, he couldn’t bring himself to look him in the eye, let alone accomplish something as emotionally important as an apology. So he just stood there, stewing in his bottled-up frustrations. He clenched his eyes and teeth shut, grunting through the latter as those frustrations festered further. It was so pathetic he could cry, but not a single tear surfaced.

**“What a shame, that you wasted your cool entrance and assertive attitude on such an inevitable outcome.”**

**“What a shame, indeed.”**

Time passed. Only a minute or two, but it was enough. Enough for the sun in the west to sink lower in the sky, closer to passing behind the mountain-lined horizon. Enough for the blue night sky to make itself present above the lower orange-yellow portions. Enough for that orange-yellow to morph into bearing a pinkish tint. Enough for the countdown to inevitable nighttime to be predictable. In Yoyogi, from the Shibuya Police Building, and at the Shibuya Scramble Crossing in the distance between, the lowering sun making every building in the latter region whose face faced east, the Shibuya 108 in particular, darken in shadow.

**“As we said before, we no longer have your friend, and that’s the truth.”**

**“But don’t think we’ll say anything more than that!”**

In Sendagaya, too. But the colorful sunset was the least of the Kigokoro clan’s concerns. Its intrusion through the windows of their seventh-story luxury apartment hideout was secondary to the meeting that took place within. The punch perm-bearing attack forces leader, who looked no different from when his clan battled the Shimizu one week prior, minus the presence of a bandage on his right cheek, stood on the step above the genkan, facing his men as they crowded opposite him. He spoke to them, explaining the situation with accompanying gestures. An arm holding up a clenched fist, which then swept to the side with palm spread, for example. His men – those in front squatting, those in the back standing – understood his orders completely. In response, they all held up various weapons as additional affirmation of their understanding. The clean-shaven muscular man and the thin black-haired twentysomething that were by his side during the Shimizu battle held up their swords, while a man between them in a green hoodie that hid his hair and sunglasses that hid his eyes held up a submachine gun with bump stock.

**“We won’t say where she now resides.”**

** “We won’t say when we sent her there, let alone when she arrived.”**

**“We won’t say if she’s safe, or even still sane. Though you’ve likely figured _that_ out by now~.”**

Preparations by the clans of the Yakuza Golden Triangle were also underway in Harajuku, home of the Hakkara clan. Instead of an apartment or abandoned building, the clan’s members opted to gather in a basement-level nightclub, barren of regular patrons. A beige floor, black walls with the occasional red panel, a rectangular bar area in the middle of the club, circular tables with chairs and similarly shaped booths on the periphery, and tiny spotlights serving as the only source of light from the dark ceiling. To match the danger-exuding class of their meeting hall, the Hakkara’s membership dressed appropriately, every last one of them wearing a suit and tie. The colors of the suits varied – black, dark blue, grey, beige, white – but the principle was consistent. In addition, the hair of all members was neatly kempt, with those in the front of the crowd that came together slicking it back for added class. Several of them kept their weapons concealed, but of those who had them drawn, the consistency continued. Every last one of their weapons was a pistol. The yakuza in front, a black-haired man in his late 20s in a black suit held up his gun, a Glock 30, and pulled back the slide for emphasis on his most recent statement. He followed it up with a final phrase to the leader he and his camaraderie faced.

**“If there’s one other thing we can say about your friend, it’s that she is, without a doubt, still alive.”**

The Hakkara’s leader, sitting at a larger-than-average booth in the back of the club, was in his 40s, but with his face lacking signs of nearing middle age and his hair still black, he looked somewhat younger. He was dressed in a black suit with matching tie, the jacket unbuttoned completely. The table was empty of food, but there was an ashtray present, a few discarded cigarettes lying in the middle. His arms were propped up against the back of the booth seat, making room for his accompaniment at the table. Two women, both dressed in evening gowns, one on either side of him. The one to his left had dark brown hair done up in a side ponytail, large breasts that straddled the border between F-cups and G-cups, and a purple gown. She rubbed his thigh with one hand, cuddling up to him from the side. The one to his right, meanwhile, had short light brown hair that hung free, an equally large chest, and a red gown with black trim along the shoulder straps. The man’s right hand rested on her shoulder, neither that action nor the guns visible on his underlings’ persons deterring her relaxed, come-hither demeanor.

After hearing his men out, the Hakkara leader took the one hand off his arm candy’s shoulder and raised his forearm, pointing up with two fingers. His signal for them to move out.

**“Now, seeing how we just mentioned that, you’re probably gonna run off and continue searching for her.”**

**“But with what little we told you, it’s nearly _impossible_ trying to find her at _this_ point!”**

Back in Shibuya, Naokuu emerged from the Police Building’s front doors, taking a few extra steps beyond before coming to a stop, inches from the steps leading down to the sidewalk. His pained frustration from passing Yokoshima by had faded, but displayed in its place was an emotion that was just as taxing. Mental exhaustion. He stared forward with a near-blank stare, bags starting to form under his eyes. Of all the things he could have had on his mind, his face said the one thing that took precedence above all else.

What to do now?

**“Therefore, we suggest that you cease your efforts to rescue her.”**

**“We say this, not only as the bondage ninja you grew to hate this past month…”**

**“…but as individuals concerned for the safety of the innocent bystander who got mixed up in our affairs.”**

Once more, the Rabaraki Complex oasis zone in the middle of Yoyogi. It had only been barren for over five minutes, ten tops, when it once again saw visitors besides the Kunoichi. Approaching from the same alley Shin and Naokuu had that morning were those in the attack forces that were still capable of fighting, or at least standing. Led in front by Komori, who discarded his jacket and shades, wielding Kigane’s katana in one hand and a pistol in the other. He marched forward with a glare, as if he were anticipating a fight. Not just in general, but on the grounds upon which he and his forces arrived.

Another fight from potential intruders.

**“Trust us. It would be better for everyone involved.”**

The Kunoichi watched from their rooftop spots as the Shimizu attack forces made their appearance, looking with their typical, apathetic half-lidded stares. At least, Nawa and Tazuna did. Fuji attempted one, but her eyes were wide enough such that she was clearly erring on the side of caution with her anticipation.

**“Better for _us_.”**

In Shibuya, Naokuu looked down, having thought his query through. There wasn’t much he _could_ do, now that he lost most of his material possessions. His gun, his jacket, his smokes and lighter, not to mention the duffel bag of ammo he was gifted just the previous evening, all left in Yoyogi. All he had were the clothes on his back, and one other thing.

**“Better for your policeman friend.”**

So he lifted that item and looked at it in favor of the ground, its blue glow artificially brightening his downtrodden visage.

**“And most of all…”**

His cell phone. On the display was a screen serving as a prelude to a potential call. There were two options at the bottom. A green phone receiver icon and the phrase “連絡今”, or “Call Now”, and a red prohibition sign and the phrase “連絡消”, or “Cancel Call”. Above those two options were a generic user icon and the name of the person he wished to call.

木塚心

Shin Kizuka

**“Better for _you_, our dear boy.”**

And finally, a return to the park. The boy and girl that arrived just as Shin started reading the letter had finished playing on the main set. The boy, about eight years old with short and messy brown hair and dressed in a thin green sweater and khaki shorts, stepped away from the slide backwards as he waited for his friend to reach the bottom.

“Okay, now let’s race home!” he called out to her, turning around and dashing off right after saying it.

“No fair, wait up!” the girl cried out, more amused than upset by the boy’s impromptu head start, and rushed after him in turn. With such tomboyish features as short light brown hair, and a light gray shirt with beige shorts in favor of something girlier in both look and color, amusement over distress seemed only appropriate.

As they ran off, their giggling resuming, Shin did as he did for the entirety of their stay. Reading the scroll, line by line. His attempt at a stoic impression had faltered. His emotions remained in check, but he was considerably sadder. And even then, he didn’t let that deter him from finishing the letter.

**“Well, it was fun, but our time running into each other is over now.”**

**“Remember to think of us whenever your cute little friend pops into your head!”**

**“Good luck with your future endeavors. And stay safe, while you’re at it.”**

将来の努力に幸運、そして安全にしてくださいまた。

Like that, he reached the end. All that was left was the closing. Written once more in black ink, it was from the three collectively.

敬具

**“Sincerely…”**

“‘…the Kinky Kunoichi.’”

He quietly spoke the final words himself, filling in whatever was originally there in favor of his own moniker for them. It was only appropriate, considering how he knew them.

That was it. The letter was finished. With nothing more to read from them regarding his reiterated failure, he sat in silence for a moment, letting everything sink in. But before he could react to his introspection, a buzzing came from one of his pants pockets. His phone’s vibrator. It would be wrong to ignore it, be it important or yet another reiteration to bring him down. So, he took the undone scroll, rolled on two ends to makeshift closure, and set it to his right. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his smartphone, looking down at it and pressing a button onscreen.

With that preliminary action complete, he held his phone up to his ear and responded.

“Hello?”

“Hey there, Shin.”

Shin blinked in surprise at the voice. “Mister Tanoshiba…”

“In the flesh.”

Back in Shibuya, Naokuu hadn’t moved from the spot where he stopped moments earlier. With his own phone to his ear, he spoke with Shin on the other side.

“So it turns out I lived. Quite the shocker, right?” he said with a wry grin.

“Wait, so you actually _beat_ that monstrosity?”

Naokuu blinked, and his grin vanished. “_Sorta_. It’s a long story. But enough about _me_. What about _you_? Did you make it to Muchise, get out of there with her? I managed to get a hold of you, so one would think…”

His words implied hope of success, but their delivery exuded nothing but doubt. Yokoshima’s mutual aversion to exchanging words had that effect on him. And in turn, his wavering words had an effect on Shin. The boy lowered his head, his natural frown widening as he found himself facing what he feared. A reiteration of his personal defeat. He stayed quiet for a moment, but before Naokuu could ask if he was still there…

“I’m sorry, Mister Tanoshiba. I failed. I couldn’t save Muchise from them. She wasn’t even there when I showed up…”

As he went on, he started to break down, his voice cracking slightly as the welling of tears affected the stability of his speech. Between his emotions and the words put to them, Naokuu’s own frown widened as well, one of disappointed expectation.

“All our effort, all our hard work, _everything_…”

Shin looked up, tears flowing down his cheeks from both eyes, and a saddened attempt at a smile on his face.

“It was all for _nothing_.”

By then, the façade broke. He started to tremble into tensing up, resisting any vocal cries as his tears kept pouring out in compensation. His smile faded, with no sign of it returning anytime soon, if ever. His choked whimpers was all Naokuu was left to listen to over the receiver.

“Understood.”

With nothing more to get out of their conversation, Naokuu pulled his phone away from his ear and pressed the red button below the stock icon. Shin’s continued sobs were cut off, and all that was left was the phrase “通話終了”, “Call Ended”, and the call duration, 0:41.

Naokuu lowered his phone and stashed it in his right pocket, letting a morose sigh escape his lips.

“Man… Fate really knows how to fuck me over.”

It was then that he started to move, traversing his way down the set of steps leading away from the Shibuya Police Building and towards the asphalt sidewalk. Several pedestrians, most of them salarymen on the way home from work with an occasional elementary schooler walking alongside one of them, passed by, but they paid Naokuu no mind as he walked down each step individually. Soon enough, he cleared all ten, and started on the path to an uncertain destination.

********

The rattling of rapid gunfire. The softer bangs of pistol shots. The scrapes and clinks of sword-to-sword contact. The sounds of the nighttime battles that composed the Great Yakuza War were once again in audible effect. But the battle of interest this evening had a completely different playing field than in months’ past. One with far greater familiarity to the three sides than any other possible battleground in the Tokyo Metropolis.

Yoyogi.

A fiery blast erupted from the northern buffer surrounding the Rabaraki Complex, drowning out the other noises of combat for a brief moment. The yakuza embroiled in the conflict didn’t view such an impact from their fellow opponents as a game-changer. Those who survived the grenade continued fighting, as if it had never gone off to begin with.

Side one: the Hakkara clan. A group of black-suited men stood side-by-side as they faced the blast, watching as the above-ground fire dissipated into smoke. They pointed their pistols at the dark cloud and fired at whatever laid behind, just in case it was being used as a smokescreen. The rings of bullets deflected by a blade from within the cloud was enough confirmation for their actions.

Side two: the Kigokoro clan. The black-haired subordinate of their leader emerged from the smoke with a jump, deflecting a couple more bullets before raising his sword above his head, swinging it down upon his descent. The slash hit the shooter on the far left, tearing through his suit and the shirt underneath and bringing forth a torrent of blood that splattered partially on him. As his target fell with a pained groan, the Kigokoro swordsman planted his feet on the ground and turned to the left, prepared to strike down the Hakkara that turned their guns on him and resumed fire. The bullets went through his chest and pushed him back, but among them, two bullets pushed him forward…

Side three: the Shimizu clan. Komori rushed at the Kigokoro swordsman from behind, tossing the pistol in his right hand to the ground and holding up the katana in his left, running him through. Seconds after the impalement, he thrust the sword out and immediately grabbed the back of his kill’s shirt with his recently freed hand. The Hakkara turned their guns on him, but found it hard to hit Komori as he rushed forward, using the Kigokoro swordsman to block the shots as his makeshift shield. He veered towards the second Hakkara in the line of three and impaled him in the stomach, putting an end to his gunfire. He then jerked his sword to the left, tearing through the second Hakkara’s abdomen and slashing through the third, that one movement letting loose a decent amount of blood that splattered on both Komori and his human shield.

“Quite the spectacle, huh?” Tazuna asked.

“You said it,” Fuji replied.

The two kunoichi, alongside their superior, once again stood atop the Rabaraki Complex as they had at sundown. However, they were in different positions than before. This time, Nawa was on the left, Fuji on the right, and Tazuna in the middle. In addition, Fuji carried a large sack in her right hand, appearing to have been fashioned from a really large piece of cloth tied together tight with all four corners.

“I expected their battles to escalate, but not to _this_ degree…”

“Yeah, I mean… who’d have guessed that _one_ invasion was all it would take to send this place into total chaos?”

“Not _me_.”

Indeed, it was chaotic down on the ground level of the Complex property. Besides the three-way combat that took place near the site of the recent grenade blast, there were other individual battles scattered across the buffer. The Kigokoro attack forces leader clashed swords with a Shimizu grunt with bandages around his forehead. His sword eventually slipped and his opponent’s sword dug into his shoulder, but that gave him the opportunity to strike at his neck, producing a greater amount of blood than what left the impact point on him. Another battle was the machinegun-wielding Kigokoro soldier standing in place as he fired streams of ammo at whoever was in its path, clenching his teeth and laughing giddily through them. That was soon put to an end when one of the Hakkara soldiers walked up behind him and shot him in the temple from a few meters’ distance, blood leaving the wounds on either side as he let go of his trigger and collapsed to the ground.

Fuji turned to look at Tazuna. “Though to be fair, I’d say the cops showing up played a _pretty_ big part in it too.”

Tazuna scoffed, tightening her crossed arms. “Damn those two. They _really_ screwed things up for us in the end.”

“Either way, the situation is clear,” Nawa said, moving her fan away from her face and closing it with a flick as she eyed the battle resuming below. “Our once perfect hiding spot is no longer safe, thanks to this turn of events. And I presume the increase in quarantine orders that will inevitably result will diminish our ability to find and capture future targets.”

Tazuna closed her eyes and grunted softly, moving her hands down to her hips. “In a way, we’re _lucky_ that the Osaka branch took our new recruits off our hands when they did.”

“And I’ve got all our supplies right here,” Fuji said, turning to Nawa and holding up the giant bag she held with relative ease. “…so the apartment’s as empty as it was when we first arrived.”

“Then it’s settled.” Nawa closed her eyes and crossed her arms, her fan stashed away. “Our time here in Tokyo is over. As of right now…” She opened her amber orbs and stared forward. “…we will find someplace else to complete our mission. Now then, shall we?”

“Of course, Mistress Nawa,” Tazuna and Fuji responded in unison.

The wind shifted once more, and just like that, they were gone. The sounds of battle in the fire-lit Yoyogi were all that remained as the Kunoichi departed in their typical fashion, leaving the decrepit neighborhood behind for good.

********

That same night, in Nakano, Shin’s house sat in relative silence on the downslope. The utility pole-mounted streetlamps were on, providing a blue-tinged light to the slope, leaving the residence visible for anyone who dared to pass it this late under recent circumstances. That is, to say, the narrow asphalt passage was completely barren, the light only attracting those that saw no need for it.

But even if he was outside in that late night hour, Shin wouldn’t have wanted that light, or any other light brighter than the faint glow of the Shinjuku skyline from the slit formed by his bedroom curtains. His room was plunged into darkness, and he embraced it in full. An action ironically personified in passivity. He laid in his bed, on his left side facing the window, not even bothering to cover himself with the topmost blanket. He hadn’t even bothered to disrobe from the clothes he left and then came back in. He did the absolute minimum required in the hours following his sunset call from Naokuu. Walk home from wherever he was dropped off, leave his shoes behind in the genkan, and call it a day by heading to his room. Prostrated on his side, waiting for unconsciousness to take him.

All he could do – all he _wanted_ to do – until then was cry.

“Muchise…” he whimpered out through multiple quiet sobs, producing no shortage of streaming tears from all corners of his eyes that rolled down his face and stained his comforter. “I’m sorry, Muchise… I should’ve known it was a lost cause… That I’d never see you again…” He grunted in growing despair, clenching his eyes tighter as he started to curl up. “I shouldn’t have even _bothered_…! Oh, Muchise… I miss you so much…”

His restrained sobs continued into the night, until eventually, his cognizance faded into a gradual slumber, rooted in the depression of having fallen short of retrieving what was his only reason for living with purpose.

********

The sounds of early morning bustle were once again present across Shibuya. Vehicles traversing the roads at reasonable speeds, pedestrians passing by on the street with only their destination in mind. An urban white noise for anyone looking to relax in such a setting characterized by mundane chaos. But that same noise was what pulled him awake.

Naokuu slowly opened his eyes as the commotion persisted, groaning gently under his breath and through his ajar mouth as he tilted his head upright, letting his sights come into focus.

All night following his pardon and subsequent declaration of an alternative punishment, Naokuu slept on the street. With no place to go back to and no car to get there, let alone any motivation to seek alternative methods following the news of overall failure, he opted to bunk in the open air of Shibuya, just a stone’s throw away from the Police Building. His back was propped up against an alley gate, granting him support in spite of its uncomfortability. On one side of the gate was the entrance to an apartment complex above a first-floor commercial outlet, and on the other was a concrete wall crawling with kudzu. One of his legs was tucked in Indian-style, while the other was outstretched. But the pedestrians crossing to the left and right paid no mind. They stepped over his leg, if not dodging it entirely, their silhouettes passing over him and keeping the sun peeking over the shadows of the structures before him from blinding him.

He watched the pedestrian flow for another moment more, and then, without a word, decided it was time he went. He bent his outstretched leg and placed one hand on the raised knee, grunting as he lifted himself off the ground. Once he was up, he stepped forward.

His straight-forward trajectory would have taken him to a green road-side barricade separating the pedestrian walkway from the traffic of Shibuya’s streets, so he made a turn in the first gap of the traveling horde he could spot. He turned left, headed north. He walked on the far right of the sidewalk; the side angled towards the staircase leading up to the pedestrian bridge hovering over the intersection where the Police Building sat. It was the only way he could get anywhere without jaywalking, and he unconsciously refused to risk even minor wrongdoings, after all the parking violations and insubordinations he made in the past.

Before long, he made it to the base of the staircase, and calmly, he placed his sneaker-clad foot on the first step, beginning his trek to higher ground.

It was around 8 A.M. in Shibuya. The sky was a light blue bordering on the typical azure, with faint cirrus clouds spread throughout the sky as reminders of the partial overcast that rolled in the previous evening. The sun wasn’t high enough to really shine yet, but it brightened the city considerably, saturating it in a glow that seemed almost blinding at first glance, especially if it was that of the day in general. Just as the vehicles on Route 246 crossed Meiji Street, and as the pedestrians crossing the intersection crossed by way of the pedestrian bridge, the Shuto No. 3 Expressway above even that bustled with vehicles. Sedans, vans, and trucks of various colors, with black, white and blue in the majority. The occasional red and yellow provided a healthy mix for those who felt the morning drive to the destination of interest wasn’t exciting enough.

But neither the street above nor the street below had the variety of individual presence as the pedestrian bridge. Contrary to the average morning, salarymen and office workers had little presence. One or two passed by, though they appeared more fit for an interview than a 9-to-5 occupation. Besides them were the others. A college student in a hoodie listening to MP3 music. Two high school-age girls in casual clothes who eschewed walking in favor of gathering near the balcony edges to converse with one another, be it idle chit-chat or juicy gossip. A mother with a preschool-age child in her arms, heading down the staircase on the Police Building’s side. A man in his 30’s, wearing a brown jacket and a flu mask that he occasionally coughed into. A middle-aged woman with a large reusable grocery bag in hand. A sweater-wearing man in his late 20’s who pulled at the front portion of his top, trying to stand his poor choice in the warmer weather. And a man in business casual with a vest and a one-strap backpack, headed for a job that wasn’t sitting in an office all day.

And then there was Naokuu, slowly sauntering straight ahead with the occasional veer for anyone who walked in his path. Despite the close proximity of the dodge, contact was nonexistent enough that he didn’t have to say “excuse me” to alert them of his presence.

With both hands in his pockets, his traversal continued down the bridge, leaving behind the crowd from the opposite direction and entering a gap where he wouldn’t have to worry about running into anyone. All the more focus on walking with an indifferent stare and a frown indicative of both his lingering frustrations and his worries about the future.

But then, something caught his ear.

“As we enter this new era, the metropolitan police system seems to be busier than it’s ever been.”

He slowed to a stop and turned his head to look at the source.

“Tell me, how are _you_ dealing with this heavier workload, Detective?”

The voice was coming from the two-story tall big-screen display fixed above the intersection-side entrance to the Police Building. It was playing an old television interview from ten or fifteen years ago, as could be told by the slightly blurry picture quality. But the digital degradation didn’t automatically render the video unwatchable, let alone hard to decipher. An off-screen interviewer held up his hand, dressed in a black suit from the wrist up, and with it brought a microphone to the face of the interviewee, standing in front of the Police Building entrance. He had more hair then than he did now, but the rest of his features were there. Round-frame glasses, a pencil mustache split into two short strips, a long face and broad jawline. He was dressed in a blue short-sleeved police uniform that showed off his hairless arms, with twin chest pockets and a badge fitted over one of them. Appearing below his visage was a subtitle, declaring his name for the viewership in that moment to see.

横島古次 探偵一位 (45才)

Detective First Rank Koji Yokoshima (age 45)

“Well, to put it simply, I’m taking things one case at a time, as I always have. And in the event that the case I’m on gets too difficult, I move on to the next one, returning to it once it reaches the point of relative ease.”

Hearing his mentor’s words come from the screen’s adjacent speakers through the sounds of pedestrian and vehicular travel around him caught Naokuu’s attention. After looking with his head turned for a few more seconds, he turned his body, now fully absorbed in the nostalgic replay.

“Uh… Wouldn’t that result in a bunch of unsolved cases?” the interviewer asked in confusion.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Yokoshima closed his eyes for a moment as he continued. “It’s true that several of my colleagues view such cases as ending in failure…”

He then reopened them, an added softness within his brown irises.

“But the way _I_ see it, those ‘failures’ are nothing more than setbacks. Obstacles that can eventually be overcome.”

Naokuu’s eyes widened at the two-part phrase, the reflection of the screen in his orbs becoming all the clearer as his open mouth let out a soft, realized gasp.

“You see, failure means giving up. Something that, as an officer of the law, I can’t allow myself to do. Whether it takes one year or one hundred, even the coldest of cases are capable of completion.”

The more the recording of Yokoshima spoke, the more Naokuu found himself enraptured by what he said, his hands leaving his pockets and hanging limp as he saw the interview to its end.

“And that mindset…” He closed his eyes and smiled wide. “…is the secret to my success in the force!”

“Welp,” the interviewer resumed. “There you have it, folks. Truly, the Shibuya Police Force is an exemplar of the Metropolitan Police’s ideals for this era…”

The interviewer’s conclusory statement gradually faded from Naokuu’s present thoughts as he stood there, looking at the screen not in attention, but reflection. Reflection of Yokoshima’s words and how they reminded him of the times before his official entry into law enforcement, before the rebellion he made against its corrupt corner this past month. The times in which being a policeman was the greatest thing in the world for him, the highest personal achievement he could possibly hope for.

Three years of pointless paperwork and a surveillant response to his unauthorized attempt at branching out had all but crushed his belief in the ideals he adhered to, both in youth and early adulthood. Even being convinced to see the attempted rescue of Muchise Yokoshima to the end did little to help, as being either a vigilante or a martyr were the only paths he had. But as looming as Gojiki’s threats that previous afternoon were, they meant he was still an officer in terms of title. And the twelve year-old words of his mentor, relayed to the inattentive passersby from the very building that would have spelled his doom, were what renewed his spirit in full.

Those two facts, together, made Naokuu’s downtrodden expression fade into obscurity. Now, he couldn’t help but smile, partly in satisfaction, but mostly in gratitude.

“Thank you, sir,” he quietly said, gripping his left hand into a gentle fist. “I needed that.”

He remained still, and in contrast, the world kept moving around him. Vehicles speeding by on the Shuto No. 3 above, their numbers greater but not to the point of peak hour congestion.

**“We live in a dangerous world.”**

The queue of vehicles in all lanes along Meiji Avenue coming to a stop according to the traffic light, giving those on Route 246 the chance to advance in their interrupted directions.

**“One where battles and monotony are ever-present.”**

Pedestrians below the elevated bridge network persisting in their travels, either leaving the stairs from which they came behind or ignoring them in favor of turning corners that required no passage over the streets coming together to form the intersection.

**“But that’s okay.”**

And those on the pedestrian bridge, moving around Naokuu, for the most part ignoring his unmoving nature with only one or two giving him a passing glance of curiosity.

**“If you can endure them, if you can overcome it, even the furthest ideals can be within reach.”**

All while he kept his head raised, looking at the screen which had moved on from the promotional interview and to a dialogue-free slideshow of more static promotions for the Shibuya Police Force. Whether they aided in shaping his brightening opinions was unclear. Nevertheless, his emotions remained consistent.

**“Yes... In these dire circumstances too, it’s not impossible!”**

And then, with a brief twitch, his fist tightened. That increased grip was brought about by the rise of another emotion, settling in his face with a glance that scrunched his eyelids but wasn’t a squint, and a smile that was as wide as it was relaxed.

He was at peace with the hand ultimately dealt to him by fate. And it was an elated peace, at that.

**“I don’t care how long it takes, or what I have to do to get there. Whatever Gojiki has in store for me, I’ll do all I can within those limits, just to get back there. Back to making a difference in society. Back to fulfilling my personal ideals. And most of all... back to being a _true_ police officer.”**

As lofty as his goals seemed to him, especially at this present stage, he paid them no mind. After all, it was as Yokoshima said. Whether it be one year or one hundred, he would overcome his setbacks and achieve success.

But that would have to wait.

For now, he remained standing on the elevated pedestrian bridge outside the Police Building. However long he chose to stay, whenever he chose to move on to whatever destination came to mind, he didn’t care what those particulars were. He simply savored the feeling of his acceptance, and by involuntary extension, the peace of the Sunday morning minutia in this pocket of Shibuya. Mostly clear, considerably bright, and all the more reason for him to look forward to whatever future laid ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The term “白銃” or “hakujuu”, meaning “drawn gun”, that Tazuna uses in the Kunoichi’s letter to Shin is a play on the term “白刃” or “hakujin”, meaning “drawn sword”.  
2\. Shibuya 108 is a reference to the Shibuya 109 department store in the ward of the same name.


End file.
